[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                   A MAJOR TEST: EXAMINING THE IMPACT
                      OF COVID	19 ON THE FUTURE OF
                            HIGHER EDUCATION

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

       SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE INVESTMENT


                         COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
                               AND LABOR
                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

              HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, JULY 7, 2020

                               __________

                           Serial No. 116-60

                               __________

      Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor
      
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]      


    Available via the: https://edlabor.house.gov or www.govinfo.gov
    
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
41-115 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------    
    
    
                    COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR

             ROBERT C. ``BOBBY'' SCOTT, Virginia, Chairman

Susan A. Davis, California           Virginia Foxx, North Carolina,
Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona              Ranking Member
Joe Courtney, Connecticut            David P. Roe, Tennessee
Marcia L. Fudge, Ohio                Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania
Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan,      Tim Walberg, Michigan
  Northern Mariana Islands           Brett Guthrie, Kentucky
Frederica S. Wilson, Florida         Bradley Byrne, Alabama
Suzanne Bonamici, Oregon             Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Mark Takano, California              Elise M. Stefanik, New York
Alma S. Adams, North Carolina        Rick W. Allen, Georgia
Mark DeSaulnier, California          Lloyd Smucker, Pennsylvania
Donald Norcross, New Jersey          Jim Banks, Indiana
Pramila Jayapal, Washington          Mark Walker, North Carolina
Joseph D. Morelle, New York          James Comer, Kentucky
Susan Wild, Pennsylvania             Ben Cline, Virginia
Josh Harder, California              Russ Fulcher, Idaho
Lucy McBath, Georgia                 Steve Watkins, Kansas
Kim Schrier, Washington              Ron Wright, Texas
Lauren Underwood, Illinois           Daniel Meuser, Pennsylvania
Jahana Hayes, Connecticut            Dusty Johnson, South Dakota
Donna E. Shalala, Florida            Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Andy Levin, Michigan*                Gregory F. Murphy, North Carolina
Ilhan Omar, Minnesota                Jefferson Van Drew, New Jersey
David J. Trone, Maryland
Haley M. Stevens, Michigan
Susie Lee, Nevada
Lori Trahan, Massachusetts
Joaquin Castro, Texas
* Vice-Chair

                   Veronique Pluviose, Staff Director
                 Brandon Renz, Minority Staff Director
                                 ------                                

       SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE INVESTMENT

                 SUSAN A. DAVIS, California, Chairwoman


Joe Courtney, Connecticut            Lloyd Smucker, Pennsylvania,
Mark Takano, California                Ranking Member
Pramila Jayapal, Washington          Brett Guthrie, Kentucky
Josh Harder, California              Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Andy Levin, Michigan                 Elise Stefanik, New York
Ilhan Omar, Minnesota                Jim Banks, Indiana
David Trone, Maryland                Mark Walker, North Carolina
Susie Lee, Nevada                    James Comer, Kentucky
Lori Trahan, Massachusetts           Ben Cline, Virginia
Joaquin Castro, Texas                Russ Fulcher, Idaho
Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona            Steve C. Watkins, Jr., Kansas
Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan,      Dan Meuser, Pennsylvania
  Northern Mariana Islands           Gregory F. Murphy, North Carolina
Suzanne Bonamici, Oregon
Alma S. Adams, North Carolina
Donald Norcross, New Jersey
                            
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

Hearing held on July 7, 2020.....................................     1

Statement of Members:
    Davis, Hon. Susan A., Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Higher 
      Education and Workforce Investment.........................     1
        Prepared statement of....................................     5
    Smucker, Hon. Lloyd, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Higher 
      Education and Workforce Investment.........................     6
        Prepared statement of....................................     8

Statement of Witnesses:
    Harper, Mr. Shaun, Ph.D. President, American Educational 
      Research Association, Los Angeles,CA.......................    52
        Prepared statement of....................................    55
    Pierce, Ms. Sharon J., ED.D, M.S.N., President, Minneapolis 
      College, Minneapolis, MN...................................    10
        Prepared statement of....................................    12
    Pulsipher, Mr. Scott, President, Western Governors 
      University, Salt Lake City, UT.............................    31
        Prepared statement of....................................    34
    White, Mr. Timothy P., Ph.D., Chancellor, The California 
      State University, Long Beach, CA...........................    18
        Prepared statement of....................................    21

Additional Submissions:
    Foxx, Hon. Virginia, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of North Carolina:
        The Myth of State Disinvestment in Higher Education......    66
    Omar, Hon. Ilhan, a Representative in Congress from the State 
      of Washington:
        Prepared statement.......................................   106
    Scott, Hon. Robert C. ``Bobby'', a Representative in Congress 
      from the State of Virginia:
        Prepared statement from American Council on Education 
          (ACE)..................................................   107
        Prepared statement from National Education Association 
          (NEA)..................................................   114
        Prepared statement.......................................   116
    Questions submitted for the record by:
        Sablan, Hon. Gregorio Kilili Camacho, a Representative in 
          Congress from the Northern Mariana Islands.............   121
        Mr. Scott................................................   118
        Takano, Hon. Mark, a Representative in Congress from the 
          State of California 

        Trone, Hon. David, a Representative in Congress from the 
          State of Maryland 

        Walker, Hon. Mark, a Representative in Congress from the 
          State of North Carolina 

    Responses submitted for the record by:
        Mr. Harper...............................................   127
        Ms. Pierce...............................................   130
        Mr. Pulsipher............................................   134
        Mr. White................................................   137

 
                   A MAJOR TEST: EXAMINING THE IMPACT
                      OF COVID-19 ON THE FUTURE OF
                            HIGHER EDUCATION

                              ----------                              


                         Tuesday, July 7, 2020

                       House of Representatives,

                   Subcommittee on Higher Education,

                       and Workforce Investment,

                   Committee on Education and Labor,

                             Washington, DC

                              ----------                              

    The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 12:00 p.m., via 
Webex, Hon. Susan Davis (Chairwoman of the subcommittee) 
presiding.
    Present: Representatives Davis, Courtney, Takano, Harder, 
Levin, Trone, Lee, Trahan, Castro, Grijalva, Sablan, Bonamici, 
Adams, Norcross, Scott (ex officio), Smucker, Guthrie, 
Grothman, Stefanik, Banks, Cline, Watkins, Meuser, Murphy, and 
Foxx (ex officio).
    Staff Present: Tylease Alli, Chief Clerk; Katie Berger, 
Professional Staff; Ilana Brunner, General Counsel; Christian 
Haines, General Counsel; Sheila Havenner, Director of 
Information Technology; Ariel Jona, Staff Assistant; Stephanie 
Lalle, Deputy Communications Director; Andre Lindsay, Staff 
Assistant; Jaria Martin, Clerk/Special Assistant to the Staff 
Director; Katelyn Mooney, Associate General Counsel; Max Moore, 
Staff Assistant; Mariah Mowbray, Staff Assistant; Jacque 
Mosely, Director of Education Policy; Veronique Pluviose, Staff 
Director; Katherine Valle, Senior Education Policy Advisor; 
Banyon Vassar, Deputy Director of Information Technology; 
Claire Viall, Professional Staff; Cyrus Artz, Minority Staff 
Director; Amy Raaf Jones, Minority Director of Education and 
Human Resource Policy; Hannah Matesic, Minority Director of 
Operations; Carlton Norwood, Minority Press Secretary; Alex 
Ricci, Minority Professional Staff Member; Mandy Schaumburg, 
Minority Chief Counsel and Deputy Director of Education Policy; 
and George Littlefair, Minority Staff Assistant.
    Chairwoman Davis. The Subcommittee on Higher Education and 
Workforce Investment will come to order.
    Welcome, everybody. I note that a quorum is present.
    The committee is meeting today for a hearing on a major 
task for higher education, how Congress can help students and 
institutions cope with COVID-19.
    As this is a completely virtual hearing, I would ask that 
all microphones for Members and witnesses participating 
remotely be kept muted as a general rule to avoid unnecessary 
background noise. Members and witnesses will be responsible for 
unmuting themselves when they are recognized to speak or when 
they wish to seek recognition. And, further, per House 
Resolution 965 and its accompanying regulations, members are 
required to leave their camera on the entire time they are in 
an official proceeding, even if they step away from the camera.
    While a roll call is not necessary to establish a quorum in 
official proceedings conducted remotely, whenever there is an 
official proceeding with remote participation, the Clerk will 
call the roll to help make clear who is present at the start of 
the proceeding.
    At this time, I ask the clerk to call the roll.
    The Clerk. Chairwoman Davis?
    Chairwoman Davis. Present.
    The Clerk. Mr. Courtney?
    Mr. Courtney. Present.
    The Clerk. Mr. Takano?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Ms. Jayapal?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Harder?
    Mr. Harder. Present.
    The Clerk. Mr. Levin?
    Mr. Levin. Present.
    The Clerk. Ms. Omar?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Trone?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mrs. Lee?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mrs. Trahan?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Castro?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Grijalva?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Sablan?
    Mr. Sablan. Present.
    The Clerk. Ms. Bonamici?
    Ms. Bonamici. Present.
    The Clerk. Ms. Adams?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Norcross?
    Mr. Norcross. Present.
    The Clerk. Chairman Scott?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Smucker?
    Mr. Smucker. Here.
    The Clerk. Mr. Guthrie?
    Mr. Guthrie. Here.
    The Clerk. Mr. Grothman?
    Mr. Grothman. Here.
    The Clerk. Ms. Stefanik?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Banks?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Walker?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Comer?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Cline?
    Mr. Cline. Here.
    The Clerk. Mr. Fulcher?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Watkins?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Meuser?
    [No response.]
    The Clerk. Mr. Murphy?
    Mr. Murphy. Here.
    The Clerk. Mrs. Foxx?
    Ms. Foxx. Here.
    Chairwoman Davis, this concludes the roll call.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you very much.
    Pursuant to our Committee Rule 7(c), opening statements are 
limited to the Chair and the Ranking Member. This allows us to 
hear from our witnesses sooner and provides all Members with 
adequate time to ask questions.
    I recognize myself now for the purpose of making an opening 
statement.
    Today, as we know, we are examining how the COVID-19 
pandemic is straining our higher education system and 
discussing what Congress must do to support students and 
institutions through this difficult time. Across the country, 
the rush to suspend on-campus activities and switch to online 
learning has exacerbated preexisting systemic inequities in 
higher education.
    For example, the on-campus resources that many students 
from low SES backgrounds normally rely on, like computer labs 
and reliable internet, are now unavailable to those students. 
The suspension of on-campus activities is also threatening many 
students' access to basic essentials like food and housing. And 
for these students, going to school had been their primary way 
of meeting these needs.
    A survey from earlier this year found students of color are 
disproportionately suffering high rates of food and housing 
insecurity due to the closure of campuses. Research also 
indicates how most students do not perform as well in online 
classes. Now, imagine how students who have already started off 
with fewer resources are more likely to struggle and face 
greater obstacles--
    Mr. Scott. My name is Robert Scott.
    Chairwoman Davis.--under these new educational conditions.
    To address these disparities, Congress secured $14 billion 
in emergency relief funding for higher education in the 
bipartisan CARES Act, and half of this funding was allocated 
specifically for direct student emergency aid. Additionally, 
Congress provided immediate relief to student loan borrowers by 
suspending student loan payments and freezing interest on all 
direct and federally held student loans.
    Unfortunately, instead of quickly disbursing these urgent 
relief funds to students, however, according to the law that we 
had passed in March, Secretary DeVos created arbitrary 
eligibility requirements for students trying to access this 
support. These restrictions not only prevent relief funding 
from quickly reaching students, but they exclude several 
underserved groups of students who cannot apply for Title IV 
aid, such as undocumented students and veterans.
    In response, the State of Washington and the California 
Community College System, which includes the San Diego 
Community College District, sued Secretary DeVos. Thankfully, 
these lawsuits have temporarily stopped the Department from 
denying California community college students and students 
across Washington access to the emergency student aid that 
Congress secured.
    But setting aside the delays and the unnecessary 
restrictions created by the Department, we must also address 
how the CARES Act simply did not go far enough to prepare our 
institutions for this looming economic recession. Due to the 
pandemic, institutions are facing unprecedented State and local 
budget shortfalls that will trigger drastic funding cuts for 
higher education, and they are facing massive revenue losses 
due to decreased enrollment and suspended activities.
    On top of all of this, institutions are still dealing with 
the residual effects of State funding cuts that were made 
during the Great Recession. For many educational institutions 
in America, these cuts and revenue losses mean severe 
reductions in services and programs that many vulnerable 
students need to complete their degree and find fulfilling 
careers.
    We know that the worst of these consequences are going to 
fall on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal 
Colleges and Universities, minority-serving institutions, and 
community colleges, which have the fewest resources despite 
serving most of our country's low-income students and students 
of color.
    Impending budget shortfalls are also putting many 
institutions under pressure to permanently reopen their 
campuses, even at the risk of exposing students, educators, and 
communities to COVID-19.
    The evidence is overwhelmingly clear. Congress must do more 
to support our students and our institutions.
    The HEROES Act would take a critical step in the right 
direction. It provides nearly $1 trillion to help State and 
local governments avert massive budget shortfalls and cuts to 
education. It also provides over $35 billion in direct relief 
funds for public institutions and other institutions that have 
suffered financially, including almost $2 billion for HBCUs, 
TCUs, and MSIs.
    Beyond extra funds, however, Congress must also protect 
students from predatory for-profit schools. These institutions 
have a record of using taxpayer dollars to target vulnerable 
students during economic downturns, often leaving them with 
worthless degrees and debt that they cannot repay.
    Simply put, the COVID-19 pandemic is testing not only our 
students and our institutions, but Congress' commitment to 
ensuring all students have access to safe, affordable, and 
quality education. Today, with the help of our witnesses--and 
we appreciate your being here--we will discuss whether we can 
live up to that commitment.
    I now yield to the ranking member, Mr. Smucker, for an 
opening statement.
    [The statement of Chairwoman Davis follows:]

Prepared Statement of Hon. Susan A. Davis, Chairwoman, Subcommittee on 
               Higher Education and Workforce Investment

    Today, we are examining how the COVID-19 pandemic is straining our 
higher education system and discussing what Congress must do to support 
students and institutions through this difficult time.
    Across the country, the rush to suspend on-campus activities and 
switch to online learning has exacerbated pre-existing systemic 
inequities in higher education. For example, the on-campus resources 
that many students from low-SES backgrounds normally rely on - like 
computer labs and reliable internet - are now unavailable. The 
suspension of on-campus activities is also threatening many students' 
access to basic essentials like food and housing. For these students, 
going to school had been their primary way of meeting these needs.
    A survey from earlier this year found students of color are 
disproportionally suffering high rates of food and housing insecurity 
due to the temporary physical closure of campuses. Research also 
indicates how most students do not perform as well in online classes. 
Now imagine how students who already started off with fewer resources 
are more likely to struggle and face greater obstacles under these new 
educational conditions.
    To address these disparities, Congress secured $14 billion in 
emergency relief funding for higher education in the bipartisan CARES 
Act. Half of this funding was allocated specifically for direct student 
emergency aid.
    Additionally, Congress provided immediate relief to student loan 
borrowers by suspending student loan payments and freezing interest on 
all direct and federally held student loans.
    Unfortunately, instead of quickly disbursing these urgent relief 
funds to students, according to the law we passed back in March, 
Secretary DeVos created arbitrary eligibility requirements for students 
trying to access this support.
    These restrictions not only prevent relief funding from quickly 
reaching students, they exclude several under-served groups of students 
who cannot apply for Title IV aid, such as undocumented students.
    In response, the state of Washington and the California Community 
College system, which includes the San Diego Community College 
District, sued Secretary DeVos.
    Thankfully, these lawsuits have temporarily stopped the Department 
from denying California community college students and students across 
Washington access to the emergency student aid that Congress secured.
    But, setting aside the delays and unnecessary restrictions created 
by the Department, we also must address how the CARES Act simply did 
not go far enough to prepare our institutions for this looming economic 
recession.
    Due to the pandemic, institutions are facing unprecedented state 
and local budget shortfalls that will trigger drastic funding cuts for 
higher education. They are facing massive revenue losses due to 
decreased enrollment and suspended activities. On top of all of this, 
institutions are still dealing with the residual effects of state 
funding cuts during the Great Recession.
    For many educational institutions in America, these cuts and 
revenue losses mean severe reductions in services and programs that 
many vulnerable students need to complete their degrees and find 
fulfilling careers.
    We know the worst of these consequences will fall on Historically 
Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, 
Minority Serving Institutions, and community colleges, which have the 
fewest resources despite serving most of our country's low-income 
students and students of color.
    The impending budget shortfalls are also putting many institutions 
under pressure to prematurely reopen their campuses, even at the risk 
of exposing students, educators, and communities to COVID-19.
    The evidence is overwhelmingly clear. Congress must do more to 
support our students and institutions.
    The Heroes Act would take a critical step in the right direction. 
It provides nearly $1 trillion to help state and local governments 
avert massive budget shortfalls and cuts to education. It also provides 
over $35 billion in direct relief funds for public institutions and 
other institutions that have suffered financially, including almost $2 
billion for H-B-C-Us, T-C-Us, and M-S-Is.
    Beyond extra funds, Congress must also protect students from 
predatory for-profit schools. These institutions have a record of using 
taxpayer dollars to target vulnerable students during economic 
downturns, often leaving them with worthless degrees and debt that they 
cannot repay.
    Simply put, the COVID-19 pandemic is testing not only our students 
and institutions, but Congress's commitment to ensuring all students 
have access to safe, affordable, and quality education.
    Today, with the help of our witnesses, we will discuss whether we 
can live up to that commitment. I now yield to the Ranking Member, Mr. 
Smucker, for an opening statement.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Smucker. Thank you, Chairman Davis. It is great to see 
you.
    Before I discuss the topic of today's hearing, I just like 
to mention the importance of doing our work in person. I and 
several of the Members--
    Chairwoman Davis. Mr. Smucker, your--
    [Audio difficulties]
    Mr. Smucker. Sorry about that, Chairwoman. Does that sound 
better now? Are we good to go?
    Chairwoman Davis. Yes.
    Mr. Smucker. So, again, before I discuss the topic of 
today's hearing, I just did want to talk about the importance 
of doing our work in person. I and several other members are 
here in the hearing room. Leader McCarthy had recently written 
in a letter to Speaker Pelosi that our Congress, which is 
literally a coming together of people and ideas, it works best 
when it happens in person, face-to-face. And while I know that 
we have all learned how to Zoom and Webex and all of this, I 
really do think that we could be operating here in person. And 
so I will make the same request that Ranking Member Foxx made 
at the start of our last hearing, which is let's return to 
congressional precedent and hold our hearings here in person.
    Turning to the topic of today's hearing, COVID-19 certainly 
has disrupted nearly every aspect of American society, 
including our higher education. And it was back in early March, 
the University of Washington became the first school to cancel 
in-person classes. Today, over 1,000 colleges and universities 
have switched to online-only instruction.
    From abrupt school closures to remote online learning, 
students and educators have faced overwhelming challenges 
during this pandemic, and that is why Congress and the 
Department of Education took several steps to ease the burden 
for States, for institutions, and for students. The bipartisan 
CARES Act, which was passed in March, included provisions to 
help students, schools, and State governments cope with the 
changes wrought by the pandemic.
    In addition to regulatory relief measures for students and 
institutions, the CARES Act provided borrowers with temporary 
respite from their repayment obligations. Specifically, the 
legislation requires the Secretary to suspend all interest 
accumulation and monthly payments on federally held student 
loans through September 30 of this year. Most critically, the 
CARES Act created and funded the Higher Ed Emergency Relief 
Fund, which provided billions in direct aid to students in 
postsecondary education institutions, including the HBCUs and 
MSIs.
    But, of course, that is not to say our work is done. On the 
contrary, the pandemic has exposed serious underlying 
deficiencies in our education system. Government overreach and 
unnecessary intervention has contributed to a bloated 
postsecondary education sector at the expense of students. 
Tuition and fees have far outpaced inflation for decades. 
Federal requirements stifle interaction between businesses and 
college campuses.
    And, unfortunately, rather than innovating, the Democrats' 
partisan HEROES Act really doubles down on what had been failed 
policies. This legislation forgives $10,000 of federal and 
private student loan debt for some borrowers, which really does 
nothing to combat COVID-19 or lower college costs. I really do 
recognize that we want to help people struggling to make ends 
meet, but we have data from the Urban Institute to prove that, 
across the board, loan forgiveness disproportionately helps 
high earning, highly educated individuals. Many Americans 
facing the greatest financial strain as a result of the 
pandemic do not have student loans at all.
    The bill also launches a socialist takeover of the private 
student loan market by forcing private student loan companies 
to offer income-driven repayment terms and conditions that are 
dictated by the Federal Government.
    In contrast, committee Republicans continue to support 
reforms that strengthen innovation and completion, modernize 
Federal student aid, and promote student opportunities. By 
giving students the tools needed to complete an affordable 
postsecondary education, we can prepare them to enter the 
workforce with the skills they need for lifelong success 
regardless of their background.
    However, these reforms won't matter if we don't reopen our 
Nation's schools and businesses safely and responsibly. We have 
a duty to lead this country back to the pre-pandemic economic 
prosperity that benefited millions of hardworking Americans.
    Congress can help further unleash our Nation's economic 
potential by increasing pathways for Americans to succeed in 
the 21st century workforce. Specifically, this means permitting 
colleges and universities to leverage employer expertise, 
encouraging short-term and stackable credentials, and creating 
a regulatory framework for new methods of learning, like 
competency-based education.
    These types of forward-looking reforms have been championed 
by the Trump administration. Just a few weeks ago, President 
Trump issued an executive order to prioritize skills-based 
hiring within the Federal Government to help strengthen and 
diversify our workforce. This action will take our Nation's 
workers and students in a positive direction as we recover from 
COVID-19, and Congress should follow the administration's lead 
on this issue.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about 
how we can improve our education system to better meet the 
needs of students, families, and workers.
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
    [The statement of Mr. Smucker follows:]

Prepared Statement of Hon. Lloyd Smucker, Ranking Member, Subcommittee 
              on Higher Education and Workforce Investment

    Before I discuss the topic of today' hearing, I want to talk about 
the importance of doing our work in person. Leader McCarthy recently 
wrote in a letter to Speaker Pelosi that 'our Congress--a literal 
coming together of people and ideas--works best when it happens in-
person, face-to-face.' I couldn't agree more, so I'll make the same 
request Ranking Member Foxx made at the start of our last hearing - 
let's return to congressional precedent and hold our hearings in 
person.
    Turning to the topic of today's hearing - COVID-19 has disrupted 
nearly every aspect of American society, including higher education.
    Back in early March, the University of Washington became the first 
school to cancel in-person classes. Today, over one thousand colleges 
and universities have shifted to online-only instruction.
    From abrupt school closures to remote online learning, students and 
educators have faced overwhelming challenges during this pandemic.
    That's why Congress and the Department of Education took several 
steps to ease the burden for states, institutions, and students. The 
bipartisan CARES Act, passed in March, included provisions to help 
students, schools, and state governments cope with the changes wrought 
by the pandemic. In addition to regulatory relief measures for students 
and institutions, the CARES Act provided borrowers with temporary 
respite from their repayment obligations. Specifically, the legislation 
requires the Secretary to suspend all interest accumulation and monthly 
payments on federally held student loans through September 30, 2020. 
Most critically, the CARES Act created and funded the Higher Education 
Emergency Relief Fund, which provided billions in direct aid to 
students and postsecondary education institutions, including HBCUs and 
MSIs.
    This is not to say our work is done. On the contrary. The pandemic 
has exposed serious underlying deficiencies in our education system.
    Government overreach and unnecessary intervention has contributed 
to a bloated postsecondary education sector at the expense of students. 
Tuition and fees have outpaced inflation for decades. Federal 
requirements stifle interaction between businesses and college 
campuses.
    Instead of innovating, the Democrats' partisan HEROES Act doubles 
down on failed policies. The legislation forgives $10,000 of federal 
and private student loan debt for some borrowers, which does nothing to 
combat COVID-19 or lower college costs. The bill also launches a 
socialist takeover of the private student loan market by forcing 
private student loan companies to offer income-driven repayment terms 
and conditions dictated by the federal government.
    In contrast, Committee Republicans continue to support reforms that 
strengthen innovation and completion, modernize federal student aid, 
and promote student opportunities. By giving students the tools needed 
to complete an affordable postsecondary education we can prepare them 
to enter the workforce with the skills they need for lifelong success, 
regardless of their background.
    However, these reforms won't matter if we don't reopen our nation's 
schools and businesses safely and responsibly.
    We have a duty to lead this country back to the pre-pandemic 
economic prosperity that benefited millions of hardworking Americans. 
Congress can help further unleash our nation's economic potential by 
increasing pathways for Americans to succeed in the 21st century 
workforce. Specifically, this means permitting colleges and 
universities to leverage employer expertise, encouraging short-term and 
stackable credentials, and creating a regulatory framework for new 
methods of learning like competency-based education.
    These types of forward-looking reforms have been championed by the 
Trump administration. Just a couple of weeks ago, President Trump 
issued an Executive Order to prioritize skills-based hiring within the 
federal government to help strengthen and diversify our workforce. This 
action will take our nation's workers and students in a positive 
direction as we recover from COVID-19, and Congress should follow the 
administration's lead on this issue.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about how we can 
improve our education system to better meet the needs of the students, 
families, and workers.
                                 ______
                                 
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you. Thank you, Ranking Member 
Smucker.
    All other Members who wish to insert written statements 
into the record may do so by submitting them to the Committee 
Clerk electronically in Microsoft Word format by 5 on Monday, 
July 21.
    It is now my pleasure to introduce our witnesses. First is 
Dr. Sharon Pierce, Ph.D., president of Minneapolis Community 
and Technical College. Since 2016, Dr. Sharon Pierce has been 
meeting the effort at Minneapolis College to provide 
transformative student experiences. Dr. Pierce has dedicated 
her career to advancing the role of community and technical 
colleges, in reducing disparities, and providing 
underrepresented students with an opportunity to achieve 
academic success.
    Prior to her higher education career, Dr. Pierce worked as 
a clinical nurse for 12 years and was appointed by Maryland's 
governor to serve on the State's Board of Nursing. She earned 
her bachelor's and master's degree from the University of 
Maryland and her doctorate degree in urban education from 
Morgan State University.
    Our next witness is Dr. Timothy White, Ph.D., chancellor of 
California State University. Since 2013, Dr. White has been 
leading the California State University, the CSU system, a 
system comprised of 23 campuses and 481,000 students and 53,000 
faculty and staff. Dr. White is a champion of exclusive 
excellence and student success and a proponent of bringing 
individualized education to scale to the expansion of proven 
best practices.
    Prior to becoming the CSU chancellor, Dr. White served as 
chancellor and professor of Biology and Biomedical Sciences at 
the University of California, Riverside for 5 years, and was 
president of the University of Idaho for 4 years. Dr. White 
pursued his higher education through Diablo Valley Community 
College, Fresno State, CSU East Bay, and the University of 
California, Berkeley.
    Next is Scott Pulsipher--I hope I have that right, sir--
president of Western Governors University. Since 2016, Scott 
Pulsipher has served as president of Western Governors 
University, the Nation's first and largest competency-based 
university. Under his leadership at WGU, WGU has expanded 
access to online competency-based degree programs that serve 
students across the country.
    Prior to joining WGU, Pulsipher gained extensive leadership 
and experience in technology-based, customer-focused 
businesses, including Amazon, Sterling Commerce, which is now 
part of IBM, and two successful startups. Pulsipher holds a 
bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University and a master's 
degree from Harvard University.
    And last is Dr. Shaun Harper, recognizing him as a Ph.D. as 
well, president of the American Educational Research 
Association and a provost professor in the Rossier School of 
Education and Marshall School of Business at the University of 
Southern California, USC. Dr. Harper is also the Clifford and 
Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership, founder and executive 
director of the USC Race and Equity Center, and a past 
president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education.
    For two decades, Harper has studied racial and gender 
equity in K-12 schools, colleges and university, and corporate 
contexts. He has been recognized in Education Week as one of 
the ten most influential education professors in the United 
States. Dr. Harper earned his bachelor's degree from Albany 
State University and a master's and doctor's degree from 
Indiana University.
    We greatly appreciate the witnesses for participating today 
and look forward to your testimony. I wanted to just remind you 
that we have read your written statements and that they will 
appear in full in the hearing record. Pursuant to Committee 
Rule 7(d) and committee practice, each of you is asked to limit 
your oral presentation to a 5-minute summary of your written 
statement. I also wanted to remind the witnesses that pursuant 
to Title 18 of the U.S. Code, Section 1001, it is illegal to 
knowingly and willfully falsify any statement, representation, 
writing, document, or material fact presented to Congress or 
otherwise conceal or cover up a material fact.
    During your testimony, staff will be keeping track of the 
time and will use a chime to signal when 1 minute is left and 
when time is up entirely. They will sound a short chime when 
there is 1 minute left and a longer chime when time is up. 
Please be attentive to the time and wrap up when your time is 
over and remute your system.
    If any of you experience any technical difficulties during 
your testimony or later in the hearing, you should stay 
connected on the platform, make sure you are muted with the 
mute button highlighted in red, and use your phone to 
immediately call the committee's IT director, Sheila Havenner, 
whose number has been provided.
    We will let all the witnesses make their presentations 
before we move to member questions, and when answering a 
question, please remember to unmute your system.
    It is now my pleasure to first recognize Dr. Pierce for 5 
minutes.
    Dr. Pierce.

     STATEMENT OF SHARON J. PIERCE, Ed.D., MSN, PRESIDENT, 
              MINNEAPOLIS COLLEGE, MINNEAPOLIS, MN

    Ms. Pierce. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Davis, Ranking Member Smucker, distinguished 
subcommittee Members, thank you for the opportunity to testify 
today. I am Sharon Pierce, president of Minneapolis College. My 
testimony will describe the impact of the global pandemic on 
community and technical colleges and our students, and the need 
for Congress to provide additional aid.
    Our college, located in an urban setting, is the only 
comprehensive community and technical college in Minneapolis. 
We serve students who are unlikely to succeed elsewhere, 
provide an opportunity to complete a credential, and elevate 
their socioeconomic status and abilities to contribute to the 
economy.
    Our students face multiple barriers to academic success. 
COVID-19 put many students out of work, leaving them unable to 
support families or access transportation or social services, 
and elevated mental health concerns. Now they must learn to 
navigate courses through an online platform, often using a 
smartphone, without reliable internet access, creating 
difficulties connecting to instructors, classmates, tutors, the 
library, and support services.
    Our college received $2.3 million in CARES funding for 
direct student aid. The guidance for this funding was difficult 
to unravel, and distribution plans needed frequent revising, 
resulting in more than 2 week delays in disbursement. Ongoing 
eligibility rulemaking by the Department of Education created 
uncertainty and limited our ability to direct aid to the most 
at-risk students.
    In response to COVID-19, we transitioned over 900 classes 
to alternative remote delivery. Moving forward, technology 
investments need to be at the forefront of decisionmaking. 
Students need hardware, software, network access, training, and 
more. Faculty, especially in career and technical programs, 
need training to advance their pedagogy using alternative 
deliveries and synchronous and asynchronous formats.
    Equitable access to education can only be achieved by 
ensuring students have the technology tools they need to 
persist in their academics and receive support services whether 
they are on campus or working remotely.
    To provide a safer campus, we need to invest in facilities 
upgrades including contactless hardware, additional cleaning 
supplies, personal protective equipment, and to engineer 
facilities to allow for physical distancing. We will continue 
to reallocate and reduce expenditures as part of our effort to 
survive potentially significant revenue losses.
    Moving forward, students who already face significant 
barriers must navigate a new economic reality. Additional 
funding from the Federal Government providing direct aid to 
students impacted by COVID-19 will support their continuous 
enrollment and aid the academic--economic recovery of our 
Nation.
    In addition, the importance of ongoing Federal 
stabilization funds to help operating costs of institutions 
like ours during this trying time cannot be overstated. While 
the CARES Act provided badly needed stabilization funding, more 
assistance is vital for us to continue to effectively serve our 
students, provide remote learning, and prepare to safely reopen 
our campus.
    According to recent estimates, community colleges face a 
collective revenue reduction of $10 billion over the next year. 
We want to stress the importance of giving students headcount-
based formula to allocate future Federal stabilization funding 
to institutions of higher education. This will allow us to 
account for the needs of all of our students, including those 
who attend part time.
    Thank you for replacing the CARES Act formula with a head-
based formula in the recently passed HEROES Act. We appreciate 
your recognition that part-time students need access to the 
same resources as their full-time peers. We are committed to 
providing access to the transformative power of education 
regardless of socioeconomic status.
    As the Nation strives to recover from COVID-19, higher 
education will be a critical component of rebuilding the 
economy. Your unprecedented level of commitment to education is 
needed now as your decisions will directly influence students' 
ability to achieve their academic goals and support the 
viability of communities.
    Thank you.
    [The statement of Ms. Pierce follows:]
   
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    

    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Dr. Pierce.
    And, now, Dr. White. Don't forget to unmute.

     STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY P. WHITE, Ph.D., CHANCELLOR, THE 
          CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, LONG BEACH, CA

    Mr. White. Ranking Member Smucker--I need to--am I--okay. 
Great.
    Chair Davis, Ranking Member Smucker, and Members of the 
subcommittee, thank you for providing me the opportunity to 
address you today.
    For those who may be unfamiliar with the California State 
University, we are the Nation's largest and most diverse 4-year 
university system; 23 campuses, more than 480,000 students, and 
approximately 53,000 faculty and staff. One out of every 20 
Americans with a college degree is a graduate of the California 
State University. More than half of our students are students 
of color, and one in three are the first in their family to 
attend college. 54 percent of our enrolled students, 230,000 of 
them, are Pell Grant recipients, and just last year alone, 
63,000 of those Pell recipients earned their bachelor's degree.
    This dynamic diversity, together with our sheer size and 
the quality of our academic programs, makes us one of America's 
most powerful drivers of socioeconomic ascent.
    Our response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been guided by 
twin north stars: Safeguarding the health and well-being of our 
students, faculty, staff, and the communities we serve, and 
maintaining our students' progress to degree. In March, the CSU 
made the massive pivot to virtual instruction, transitioning 
over 70,000 classes, together with academic and student support 
services, to virtual modalities. We have taken great care to 
mitigate the pandemic's impacts to our students, especially our 
most vulnerable.
    Measures include maintaining on-campus housing and 
essential services for students who have nowhere else to call 
home, distributing thousands of laptops and tablets, and 
offering safe WiFi hotspots to help address the digital divide, 
continuing to meet our students' basic needs with no-contact 
food distribution, and emergency housing services for students 
who are food and housing insecure. Campus counseling services 
are offered virtually, serving students presenting with a 
variety of mental health issues during the crisis, and 
providing necessary flexibility around academic policies for 
current students, and adjusting admission policies to mitigate 
hardships to prospective students and their families.
    We are extremely grateful for the more than $563 million in 
financial relief provided to our students and campuses through 
the CARES Act. Because Education Department guidance limited 
eligibility for CARES Act emergency grants, we have augmented 
those funds with campus resources so that all of our students 
in need due to COVID-19, including doctorate students and 
international students, could receive much needed financial 
emergency support.
    Informed by the guidance of scientific and medical experts, 
along with public health officials, we are planning for a 
primarily virtual fall, with exceptions for critical in-person 
experiences that can be conducted within rigorous standards of 
health and safety. As we plan for the fall and beyond, the CSU 
confronts a grim new fiscal reality. Our campuses face soaring 
costs and mounting revenue losses associated with the pandemic, 
putting our students' well-being and success at significant 
risk.
    The recently passed California budget cuts our 
appropriation by $299 million, 4.2 percent of our operating 
budget, unless additional Federal relief funds are forthcoming.
    So I ask for additional support in investment during this 
historic public health crisis. I do so on behalf of the 
Nation's largest and most diverse student body. Keeping these 
students, students from all walks of life, enrolled and 
graduating with a high-quality degree not only benefits them, 
their families, and communities, it is also a vital public good 
for the Nation. Supporting higher education at this critical 
moment stimulates the deployment for hundreds of thousands of 
Americans now and into the future, spurring tax revenue while 
reducing reliance on social services.
    America, through the economic recovery and beyond, will 
require an increasingly nimble, educated workforce. We need 
culturally competent problem solvers, comfortable and capable 
in the sciences and technology, climate literate and inspired 
to lead the world into a sustainable future. We need them to 
ensure a vigorous American economy in a changing world of work, 
and we need them for a vibrant and more equitable society. We 
stand ready to be a resource as you continue to explore ways to 
support higher education.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to address you today, 
and I am happy to answer any questions that you would like.
    [The statement of Mr. White follows:]
    
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    

    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. White.
    And now I recognize Mr. Pulsipher for five minutes. Thank 
you for being with us, sir.

  STATEMENT OF SCOTT PULSIPHER, PRESIDENT, WESTERN GOVERNORS 
                 UNIVERSITY, SALT LAKE CITY, UT

    Mr. Pulsipher. Chairwoman Davis, Ranking Member Smucker, 
and Members of the subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity 
to share my views on the impact of COVID-19 on the future of 
higher education. At WGU, we are compelled by our belief in the 
inherent worth and ability of every individual and in the 
transformative power of education. We believe that the pathways 
to opportunity should be open to everyone.
    WGU is a private, nonprofit, self-sustaining institution 
founded in 1997 by a bipartisan group of 19 governors who saw 
the opportunity to use technology and competency-based 
education to expand access to higher education and better align 
with workforce needs. Today, we serve over 120,000 full-time 
students in all 50 States, over 70 percent of whom would be 
classified in one or more underserved categories. We deliver 
affordable, relevant, high-quality programs, combined with a 
student-centered instructional model entirely online, and that 
propels students towards completion, great jobs, and 
opportunity.
    Recent months have seen life upended for every American and 
particularly for the nearly 20 million students enrolled in 
higher education. With their immediate and persistent 
challenges, students have acute needs for material support to 
stay on their path to opportunity, and we need to ensure access 
through the online world in which learning now takes place.
    Over 21 million Americans, disproportionately people of 
color, do not have sufficient bandwidth to stream this hearing, 
take part in our civic fight, access education, or participate 
in the digital workforce.
    There are also many anxious questions about the fall 
semester, but students also need us to look well beyond the 
fall and address strategic questions facing American higher 
education. Higher education entered the pandemic with 
preexisting conditions; rapidly escalating cost, widening 
disconnect with workforce needs, crushing student debt, 
unacceptable racial disparities and outcomes, and low 
completion rates. Now the sector is in the throes of 
technology-driven disruption, irreversibly accelerated by 
COVID-19. Near-term issues are certainly pressing, whether 
safely reopening campuses, enabling institutions to online 
shift, or the protection of displaced students due to potential 
closures.
    We must reestablish the purpose and mission of 
postsecondary education and modernize the way we invest in it. 
We must embrace the technology first approach to teaching and 
supporting students. We must move swiftly and radically to not 
only get the 20 million currently enrolled students back on the 
path to completion, but also upscale many of the 40-plus 
million Americans who have been displaced during the pandemic 
and the tens of millions more whose work is being reshaped by 
technology.
    Quite simply, we need to reimagine postsecondary education 
as a true lifelong model of providing high-quality, relevant 
pathways to both an individual's first and next opportunities. 
Even short-term support and accommodations should be designed 
to prioritize with the long term in mind.
    The written testimony I have submitted includes various 
policy ideas that I believe address many of the challenges our 
country and its students face as a result of COVID-accelerated 
shifts. All of the ideas are based on a few simple guiding 
principles. First, students should be prioritized over 
institutions. Second, student outcomes matter more than 
institutional inputs, and learning or mastering rather than 
time should be the critical denominator of education.
    In the 1930s, our Nation responded to a great economic 
crisis by passing a New Deal. In the 1940s, facing an 
unprecedented need for education as young soldiers returned 
from war hungry for opportunity, Congress opened the door to 
direct Federal investment in higher education by passing the GI 
Bill. In the 1960s, facing widespread protests and social 
unrest in response to structural racism, we saw a wave of 
legislation around civil rights.
    Today, we find ourselves at the intersection of several 
similar great forces. We face a significant economic challenge 
of an unprecedented need for education, [inaudible] workforce, 
and, sadly, continue to grapple with inequities which have been 
both exposed and widened by the pandemic. We are living in 
unprecedented times, times that demand our best thinking, new 
frameworks, and a smart investment.
    Congress can renew the pathways to opportunity for every 
American. We need landmark legislation on education and work, a 
new approach that can meet the challenges of this moment and 
the future that follows it, that is designed for the digital 
and information age and that can fundamentally modernize our 
approach to investing in and unlocking the potential of every 
individual.
    Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and to be of 
assistance as you take on the critical questions facing 
America's higher education system.
    [The statement of Mr. Pulsipher follows:]
    
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
    I now recognize Dr. Harper for five minutes.

     STATEMENT OF SHAUN HARPER Ph.D., PRESIDENT, AMERICAN 
       EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATION, LOS ANGELES, CA

    Mr. Harper. Thank you for including me in this important 
hearing. It is imperative that we devote serious attention to 
the numerous racial equity consequences of reopening campuses. 
I present 10 considerations in the written version of my 
testimony. I will talk only about nine of them here, as the one 
pertaining to student visas and travel bans is outside the 
purview of this subcommittee.
    Here are nine critical racial equity considerations. One, 
disproportionately placing essential workers at risk. 
Custodians, food service professionals, and maintenance workers 
will inevitably be deemed essential workers when campuses 
reopen. Professionals of color are disproportionately 
performing these roles. Being required to come to campus and 
interact with other workers and students places employees of 
color and the family members with whom they live at greater 
risk of exposure to COVID-19.
    Campus reopening plans must consider the health 
implications of employees of color and lower income essential 
workers. Federal aid specifically earmarked for the safety of 
employees who are deemed essential workers would help 
institutions provide PPE, cleaning supplies, contact tracing, 
and testing.
    Two, the racialization of layoffs and terminations. 
Financial effects of the pandemic will force higher education 
leaders to make tough workforce reduction decisions. 
Inattention to the race of the persons being terminated and 
laid off will inevitably yield pronounced negative effects on 
employees of color, given the low-level service positions they 
disproportionately occupy. Hence, campus reopening plans must 
specify ways to avoid even more significant racialized 
employment inequities. Federal investments would help minimize 
the necessity of workforce reductions at higher education 
institutions.
    Three, risk of violence for Asian American and Asian 
international students and employees. Recent studies document 
horrifying acts of discrimination and physical violence towards 
Asian Americans and Asian immigrants in the U.S. throughout the 
pandemic. Thus, reopening plans must include ways to protect 
these students and employees as they return to campuses.
    Four, trauma and grief support for persons 
disproportionately experiencing loss. COVID-19 deaths are 
disproportionately affecting communities of color. Because of 
this, students of color and employees of color from these 
groups are likelier than are their White counterparts to have 
lost a family member, friend, or someone in their community. 
The reopening plans must include ways to ensure these persons 
have more than adequate mental and emotional support resources.
    Five, sending infected students home to vulnerable families 
and communities. Many institutions plan to conclude on-campus 
living and learning by Thanksgiving in anticipation of a 
possible second wave of the coronavirus. Given the 
disproportionately higher numbers of COVID-19 infections and 
deaths among people of color, it is plausible that students of 
color returning home from college could pose an especially big 
risk to communities that have already been disproportionately 
devastated by COVID-19.
    Six, placing Black football and men's basketball players at 
a disproportionately higher risk. In 2018, Black men were 2.4 
percent of undergraduates enrolled at universities that make up 
the five most financially lucrative intercollegiate sports 
conferences, yet they comprise 55 percent of football teams and 
56 percent of men's basketball teams on those campuses. Thus, 
participation in these two contact sports places Black 
undergraduate men at a disproportionate risk of COVID-19 
infection.
    Seven, financial support for chronically underfunded 
minority-serving institutions. Investing significant Federal 
COVID-19 recovery funds specifically into Historically Black 
Colleges and Universities, Tribal colleges, and community 
colleges would help them better serve the low-income Americans 
they disproportionately educate, most of whom are students of 
color.
    Eight, addressing racialized digital access inequities. As 
we have seen throughout the pandemic, low-income students lack 
access to reliable high-speed internet. Many of them are 
students of color. As institutions consider reopening in phases 
with a fraction of courses meeting on campus and others online, 
plans must include strategies and investments in closing 
digital access gaps for students of color who continue to 
access courses from their homes and lower income communities.
    And ninth, upskilling faculty members and teaching students 
of color online. Faculty development activities included in 
campus reopening plans cannot just focus on creative teaching 
tricks to keep all students engaged online. They must also pay 
attention to ensuring that students of color are not 
experiencing the same racism in virtual classrooms that they 
experienced in on-campus learning environments long before the 
pandemic.
    Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Harper follows:]
    
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    

    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Dr. Harper.
    We appreciate all of you and appreciate your staying within 
the limits, especially. That is really helpful.
    Under Committee Rule 8(a), we will now question witnesses 
under the 5-minute rule. I will be recognizing subcommittee 
members in seniority order. Again, in order to ensure that the 
members' 5-minute rule is adhered to, staff will be keeping 
track of time and will use a chime to signal when 1 minute is 
left and when time is up entirely. It is a little annoying 
charm--chime that we have, but nevertheless, it is helpful to 
us. They will sound a short chime again when 1 minute is left, 
a longer chime when time is up, so please be attentive.
    If any member experiences technical difficulties during the 
hearing, you should stay connected on the platform. Make sure 
you are muted with the mute button highlighted in red, and use 
your phone to immediately call the committee's IT director, 
Sheila Havenner, whose number has been provided.
    And as Chairwoman, I now recognize myself for 5 minutes.
    And, again, just putting this in a bit of context as 
everyone has done, as evidenced by the last recession, we know 
that State higher education budgets are often the first to be 
cut during economic downturns as States look to balance their 
budgets. A study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 
estimates that States will lose $765 billion over the next 3 
years. Already, States across the country have announced cuts 
to higher education spending.
    For example, California announced a $970 million cut for 
the University of California and California State University 
systems. These budgets drive up tuition costs that ultimately 
place the burden on students and their families and reduce 
academic quality. And, of course, we know it is not just the 
tuition costs that students bear, but it also is living 
expenses and a whole host of other needs to be successful in 
their studies.
    Dr. Harper, what was the impact of State higher education 
budget cuts on students at institutions in the Great Recession?
    Mr. Harper. Thank you for that question. The impact was, 
for sure, disproportionate on chronically underfunded 
institutions like community colleges, Historically Black 
Colleges, and Tribal colleges. Certainly, the steep growth to 
recovery for them was a much steeper climb than for more highly 
resourced institutions. In many instances, the financial pain 
of that time period still remains for many of those 
institutions as they are seeking to catch up. It is why I am 
especially worried about the financial consequences of the 
pandemic on those institutions.
    We have seen this before, you know, again, with the Great 
Recession, so I am hoping that Congress will pay particular 
attention in its investments to ensuring that those 
institutions don't have as steep a hill to climb in their 
recovery.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you. And just following up on that, 
because I think sometimes people feel that there doesn't need 
to be a State--a Federal role here. So why is Federal 
investment critical to supporting students in institutions? And 
why isn't it the State governments, or in the case of other 
schools, enough without that kind of Federal funding? And what 
is likely to occur without that immediate Federal action to 
address these funding shortfalls?
    Mr. Harper. Well, for one, we will see tremendous 
unevenness across States in their investments in postsecondary 
education. But secondly, and I think most importantly, higher 
education is a public good that benefits the entirety of our 
Nation and our Nation's position in a global economy. 
Therefore, Federal investment into higher education is really 
an investment into the economic security, the homeland 
security, and the viability of the United States.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you.
    I want to turn to Dr. White. Dr. White, how will this 
multimillion dollar State budget cut impact CSU's ability to 
operate and serve students? And I know you addressed this 
somewhat, but focusing on those students already having 
difficulty for a variety of reasons pre-COVID. You know, we 
have, I think, to deconstruct the reasons why students were 
having those difficulties in the past as well. Dr. White?
    Mr. White. So in the spring term alone across the 
California State University, we lost $337 million in loss 
revenue and added costs to pivot these classes and do it in a 
healthful way. The State budget that was just approved by our 
governor has a $299 million cut in our base appropriation, 
which is about 4.6 percent of our operating budget. 
Importantly, the Federal Government can play a role here. 
[Inaudible] by October 15 provide another financial support to 
the States that $299 million will be reversed and given back to 
the CSU.
    So it does have an effect, these numbers are real, and we 
will do our very best to meet the needs of our students, as 
many as we possibly can, going forward.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Dr. White.
    I think my time is up as well. Appreciate it.
    Now I want to turn to Mr. Smucker from Pennsylvania, for 
the ranking member to ask his questions.
    Mr. Smucker. Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank all the panel. 
Mr. Pulsipher, I have just a question for you in regards to 
what has already been mentioned, college affordability, which 
is, of course, a top priority for policymakers but certainly 
for students and their families. And I know Western Governors 
has a track record of keeping costs low, but this pandemic is 
adding additional financial burdens on all schools. I have 
certainly heard from institutions throughout my home State of 
Pennsylvania that COVID-19 is going to lead to increased costs 
on students [inaudible] harm students in order to safely and 
[inaudible] protocols.
    So I sure would like to get your thoughts on that, 
including how has Federal action helped the sector so far. And 
what role could Congress play, what role should we play, in 
helping colleges open responsibly and helping them to reduce 
additional costs on students?
    Mr. Pulsipher. Thank you, Ranking Member Smucker. COVID-19 
was surely not in any institution's strategic plan, and so the 
costs of adapting are definitely quite large and great for many 
institutions. Because of WGU's operating model, WGU itself is 
not experiencing any budgetary pressures like many of our peer 
institutions. That is primarily because much of our investments 
and operating expenses do not include operating buildings and 
campuses and many other things that also have been revenue 
sources from housing, feeding, or even student life activities 
and athletics, et cetera. So with that kind of operating model, 
we--our entire self-sustaining operation is dependent on 
tuition alone. It has allowed us to continue uninterrupted.
    I think these same COVID pressures are highlighting now or 
exposing, if you will, the many challenges that exist with the 
economic model that we have in higher education in the U.S. And 
so I think in general we should be focused, first and foremost, 
with this principle on students and how do we consider the 
funding and supports necessary to provide the instruction, the 
access, the improved digital experiences that they need to 
continue in their progress in their programs. And so how do we 
ensure that students are not so severely disrupted that they 
are stopping out and ends up to where they are not completing?
    And so I think that can be a guiding principle as Congress 
contemplates how to provide the appropriate aid and stimulus so 
that the near-term impact of the pandemic can be managed, but 
also we can design for the long term and really reinvent the 
economic model of higher education.
    Mr. Smucker. Thank you. I know the Department and Congress 
have provided institutions some temporary reprieve from 
regulatory burdens throughout this crisis, which I believe, we 
all believe, was appropriate to help institutions quickly adapt 
to the challenges of COVID-19, but what can we learn from that 
for the long term? What regulations, what guidance should 
Congress reevaluate for the long term in light of what we have 
learned from the pandemic?
    Mr. Pulsipher. Thank you for that question. I think those 
were appropriate, and surely, the rapid shift from 
traditionally classroom or place-based instruction to a 
predominantly, or if not, 100 percent online instructional 
model, it does require the rethinking of the faculty-student 
interaction and requires rethinking about the time of 
instruction and credit hour and the pacing of learning. If you 
consider many eligibility requirements that are programmed in 
an institution, even at the student level for Federal student 
aid, they are constructed around a very conventional model of 
learning. And so now, when we are having a rapid shift to a 
technology-enabled model, those paradigms that we are used to 
are being reconstructed.
    And so I think it is appropriate to have short-term 
accommodation for that. Now it is really informing how we 
should think about distance education, how we should think 
about pace and the learning progress, assessment of learning, 
et cetera, that those models should be contemplated in the 
future.
    Mr. Smucker. What about--and I am sorry to cut you off. I 
am almost at the end of my time. But, you know, we use a number 
of accountability metrics, like cohort default rates, financial 
responsibility scores, and so on. Should we be looking at any 
of those and thinking about which of those we should continue 
and which should potentially be changed?
    Mr. Pulsipher. We should definitely be looking at primarily 
what I would call student success measures. I think there are 
elements around persistence and progress and completion rates 
and also attainment and placement rates that lead to things 
like loan repayment rates as being a good measure of 
accountability for the effectiveness of the educational 
pathways. I think that is a good example of where focusing on 
measures of outcomes as the quality measures of learning rather 
than institutional models.
    Mr. Smucker. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Davis. Okay. Thank you very much.
    I now want to turn to the ranking chair of the Education 
Committee. I understand, Dr. Foxx, that you would like to go 
next.
    Ms. Foxx. Well, thank you very much, Madam Chair. I was 
quite willing to wait till the next person, but thank you. I 
appreciate it.
    Chairwoman Davis. You are fine. Go ahead. I am sorry. I 
actually was going to go to Mr. Courtney, but I just got a 
notice that you wanted to be next in the queue. But if Mr. 
Courtney is okay with it, we will go ahead and hear from Dr. 
Foxx, and then we will go back to Dr. Courtney--to Mr. 
Courtney.
    Mr. Courtney. I am fine. Go ahead, Virginia.
    Chairwoman Davis. Okay. Thank you.
    Ms. Foxx. Thanks, Joe. I appreciate it.
    Mr. Pulsipher, thank you again for your testimony today, 
for the work you do to help students, and particularly one 
student I know you have helped, I am very grateful for.
    Western Governors University has shown competency-based 
education, which is an educational program where students 
progress based on mastery of skills instead of time spent in 
the classroom, as a successful model for many students. CBE can 
benefit students by quickening time to a degree, lowering 
college costs, building portfolio success. Could you describe 
WGU's experience building CBE programs and the success of your 
student graduates compared to other institutions of 
postsecondary education? I am particularly interested in the 
achievement of your low-income, first-generation, and minority 
students and how CBE benefited their lives. And, again, I know 
of particularly one low-income, first-generation student that 
you have been a big help to.
    Mr. Pulsipher. Thank you, Ranking Member Foxx. Surely, WGU 
was not the inventor of competency-based education, but we are 
one of the pioneers of it. We today have over 191,000 graduates 
since founding. And the use of competency based as a 
pedagogical model was purely a function of our focus on the 
student, particularly the working learners that we serve.
    And so really, competency-based approach focuses on keeping 
the standards for proficiency or learning constant and allowing 
a time to vary. And that affords us the ability to better line 
learning outcomes or the workforce needs, to personalize the 
student journey to increase the probability of individual 
student success, and ultimately allows them to both, you know, 
leverage prior learning and move at their own pace.
    And, you know, for WGU, you know, we are serving students 
in all 50 States. We have a 45 percent 4-year graduation rate 
at the bachelor's level, which is significantly higher than the 
32 percent nationally. We have really high employment rates at 
95 percent with 88 percent in fields [inaudible]. And maybe 
more importantly, employers are--97 percent of them are saying 
our graduates meet and exceed expectations and are ready for 
the job.
    Particularly to your question about low-income and 
underserved students, while we still see gaps in their 
attainment versus their White peers and their higher income 
peers, the reality is that they are achieving at a higher rate 
than we have seen nationally and particularly in low-income, 
rural, and military categories of individuals. And so we are 
quite proud of our ability to access and serve underserved 
individuals.
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you.
    The Higher Education Act does not have a clearly defined 
pathway for the CBE model. How has the flexibility of current 
law restrained other institutions from creating CBE programs? 
What recommendations do you have to reform the HEA to encourage 
the proliferation of high-quality CBE programs?
    Mr. Pulsipher. Thank you. Yeah, as noted in my written 
testimony, it is definitely--we believe it is time to fully 
embrace competency-based education.
    If I recall, according to CBEN, the Competency Based 
Education Network, over 600 institutions have pilots or 
programs developing for competency-based education, but they 
are hampered, like we were, with the disparity with current 
regulatory definitions, meaning the design of it. And that 
could be trying to shoehorn program considerations into credit-
hour accreditation models, regulatory criteria around full-
time, and pacing, et cetera, that makes it quite difficult to 
rapidly innovate and expand access to these highly effective 
and aligned program models.
    And so we do believe that legislation and regulatory 
frameworks should encourage innovation, not just support it. 
And if we also focus on student success and outcomes rather 
than prescribing a model, our Nation and our American workforce 
will be better served.
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you.
    You have built a strong connection between WGU and 
employers. Why did you [inaudible], and how did this outreach 
contribute to your students' success? What can other 
institutions do to engage employers in their academic programs?
    Mr. Pulsipher. Well, I think we simply believe that if 
education is to be the surest path to opportunity, then it has 
to be aligned with a market that presents those opportunities. 
And so we leverage large data sets from partners like MC or 
Burning Glass about workforce demands and roles, and that 
informs the programs and credentials that we develop and offer. 
And then, beyond that, we partner directly with employers and 
experts from those fields to design the curriculum so the 
learning outcomes directly map to the competencies required in 
the workforce.
    We do believe that the future of education is based in 
skills and competencies, and it is a language that employers 
are speaking more fluently. And higher education can invest in 
this more workforce-employer partnership model to increase the 
alignment and relevancy of educational pathways to opportunity.
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you very much.
    Madam Chair, I would like to submit for the record facts 
related to funding by various entities and the growth in 
spending that has occurred over the years. So we will submit 
that separately.
    [The information follows:]
    
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    

    Ms. Foxx. And thank you very much. And, again, I appreciate 
Mr. Courtney's consideration. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you.
    I will now turn to Mr. Courtney for his 5 minutes.
    Mr. Courtney. Great. Well, thank you, Chairwoman Davis and 
Ranking Member Smucker.
    And, Ms. Foxx, always glad to accommodate your schedule.
    So, Dr. Harper, you are correct in your testimony that our 
committee does not have direct jurisdiction over the State 
Department or the Department of Homeland Security. However, the 
Higher Education Act does authorize various programs that does 
promote exchange students and international, you know, cross-
pollination in our higher education programs with countries all 
over the world.
    And, you know, strictly from just a pure monetary 
standpoint, there are about a million international students 
that are enrolled in the U.S. That is about $41 billion in 
terms of revenue. The Department of Commerce actually treats 
that tuition money as an export for the purposes of our trade 
balance.
    And, obviously, I think as you, I am sure, can attest, you 
know, the policies of this administration, which has pretty 
much shut down the visa availability for students wanting to 
enroll in the U.S. and then, just this Monday, announcing that 
ICE is going to actually deport students from this country 
whose schools are only offering online programs, you know, just 
really kind of flies in the face of what we are hearing today 
about the fact that we need a regulatory structure that needs 
to be flexible given the COVID emergency and just to also 
recognize that online, virtual learning, partly because of 
necessity but also partly because of value, as we just heard 
from Mr. Pulsipher, is something that we are in a place right 
now where we have to incorporate it.
    And having these arbitrary policies that are actually now 
talking about deporting people, you know, really puts, I think, 
educators in an impossible position about sort of having to 
balance things like, you know, staying on the right side of the 
Federal Government and trying to protect their students.
    So I was wondering, again, if you could touch on that 
number 10 point that you mentioned in your opening remarks and 
really how we have to look at it in the whole picture, 
holistically, in terms of the challenge we are facing right now 
for higher education.
    Mr. Harper. Sure. I really appreciate you affording me an 
opportunity to talk through that 10th point. It is really 
important.
    You know, those policy actions are not only arbitrary, as 
you have noted, but they are also, I am afraid, sinophobic and 
xenophobic.
    I wrote that particular consideration in my written 
testimony before we got the news on Monday about the ICE 
deportations. I somehow had a scary suspicion that this 
administration would find some way to target Chinese students 
and international students from other countries.
    It is so important to note that international students make 
our colleges and universities better. They afford American 
students the opportunity to interact with people who bring 
diverse viewpoints. So many colleges and universities 
articulate in their mission statements a commitment to 
preparing students for citizenship in a global democracy. Well, 
if that is the case, we need international students here, you 
know, to afford our students, you know, that kind of learning 
opportunity.
    But we also--you know, I think it is important to, you 
know, push against, you know, all of the, you know, xenophobic 
and sinophobic actions that we are seeing in this 
administration. And, you know, these most recent actions 
concerning, you know, ICE and the deportation of international 
students is just ridiculous. They require stronger Federal 
oversight.
    Mr. Courtney. Thank you.
    I mean, we have had a lot of press in Connecticut about 
student athletes. I think the NCAA calculates there are about 
20,000 international students as part of the NCAA. Geno 
Auriemma, the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame coach, was in the 
press talking about three student athletes that are in his 
program--one from Croatia, one from Poland, and one from 
Canada--who are now basically unable to get into the country. 
But, to his credit, I mean, he pointed out in the press--and I 
am quoting him now--``Not just athletes, but kids who are 
enrolled here, going to school. What is the issue here? Why 
can't we get that resolved? So, what, because they don't make 
$20 million a year and play in the NBA or Major League Baseball 
or the NHL?'' Because, obviously, ICE has waived and allowed 
visas for, you know, athletes who are in professional sports 
but not in college sports.
    So, you know, again, we are just, sort of, dealing with 
these contradictions that are, again, putting pressure on 
campuses to reopen more than maybe it is safe, given where they 
are located, as well as creating these different classes of 
people from overseas that can actually come here and enrich our 
country.
    So thank you for your testimony.
    And with that, I yield back, Susan.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Courtney.
    Mr. Guthrie of Kentucky, you have 5 minutes.
    Mr. Guthrie. Thank you much, Madam Chair. I really 
appreciate you conducting this hearing.
    And my question is for Mr. Pulsipher.
    I note in your testimony you said that suddenly 3.3 million 
teachers were suddenly grappling with how to teach online. And 
I know that Western Governors University is online, and you 
have kind of mastered those competencies.
    And I actually had the good experience of having my 
daughter home this semester, really second half of the 
semester, and watching her online. And I am not sure the--
although the price didn't change much, I am not sure the 
quality was the same between--and she was at a traditional on-
campus program.
    So I guess my question, Mr. Pulsipher, is, what has Western 
Governors done to propel students into the workforce that is at 
least equal to, if not, I guess in your opinion, would be 
superior at least to a traditional student program? What are 
the things online that you figured out that other universities 
need to do if we move forward this way?
    And, specifically, I would like you to address the minority 
students, the students of color, particularly with the digital 
divide that Dr. Harper has pointed out.
    And, in Kentucky, I can tell you, with our K-12 situation, 
the digital divide was also rural and urban as much as anything 
else, and so--but it is real. It is real for people of color. 
It is real with more rural areas.
    So, one, what areas have you guys mastered that other 
universities need to look for online learning? And how have you 
addressed the digital divide?
    Thank you.
    Mr. Pulsipher. Thank you, Congressman Guthrie. I appreciate 
that question.
    I think one of the most important things is to simply 
embrace the entire capabilities of the medium, if you will. And 
by that, what I really mean is, like, you have to have a tech-
first mindset. How does technology enable all facets of the 
engagement of a student with the content, with the instructor, 
with peer students, everything else like that?
    And if you truly consider all the other dynamics that we as 
the consumers experience, like, very few of them, if any, would 
you argue that the online experience is worse than the 
traditional place-based model, whether it is shopping, banking, 
et cetera. We believe the same is true for learning.
    So some examples of that is, we have disaggregated the 
faculty model, because we realized in the teaching and learning 
models online, it is about one-to-one interactions as much as 
it is about a classroom. And so you have to think about: How 
are you providing access to the subject-matter experts and the 
instructors that really help on an individual basis? How do you 
change the nature of content consumption away from a lecture in 
a hall to what are all the videos and mediums and the virtual 
courses, et cetera, that you can engage with and that you could 
also engage with peers on? So much of the instruction and 
learning actually occurs asynchronously outside of the 
interaction with the instructor.
    And I think there is another simple dynamic, by the way, 
that says you have to rethink the concept of time, that now an 
individual is in control of the time rather than an institution 
setting a lecture schedule and office hours for faculty, et 
cetera.
    The last thing I would point out is that the data that then 
becomes available to an institution to really test the efficacy 
of all the different pedagogical approaches, the technology 
that has been deployed, et cetera, and you can actually now 
measure the impact on student progress and learning.
    This extends to our ability to help underserved students 
and individuals of color, because you can actually engage with 
them, every student, on a one-to-one basis.
    And then the last point is, I would extend what Dr. White 
has also said in his testimony, is that WGU in like manner has 
invested in providing, you know, scholarships that cover 
specifically technology like laptops as well as high-speed 
bandwidth access, things like that. We have also been 
[inaudible] directly invest in infrastructure to address this 
digital divide that now exists.
    Mr. Guthrie. Okay.
    Well, also--so my guess, though, is if you are looking at a 
digital model, online model, and you are on the other side of 
the digital divide, that you might not see that as an 
opportunity for you, even though, as you say, it could be a 
better opportunity for you.
    So how does Western Governors University reach out to 
students that may not even view this as an opportunity for 
them, to make sure they know that it is there?
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Mr. Guthrie.
    Mr. Guthrie. Oh, I am out of time?
    Chairwoman Davis. I think you have had the second bell, 
so--
    Mr. Guthrie. Oh, okay. I thought that was the first bell. I 
am sorry. Okay. I am sorry. I yield back then. I apologize.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Harder of California, you have 5 minutes.
    Mr. Harder?
    Oh, Mr. Takano. Okay. I don't have you--
    Mr. Takano. Madam Chair?
    Chairwoman Davis. Yes, Mr. Takano, you are next, but I 
hadn't had you earlier. So if you are ready to go, go ahead.
    Mr. Takano. Thank you. Thank you, Chairwoman Davis, for 
convening this critical hearing on the future of higher 
education in our country.
    During recessions, States typically fund their public 
education systems first when they are experiencing--well, they 
cut funding to their public education systems first when they 
are experiencing budget shortfalls. And these cuts almost 
always disproportionately impact low-income students and 
students of color. Due to these cuts, institutions will be 
forced to provide less resources to help these students.
    The $14 billion Congress provided in the CARES Act was an 
essential lifeline, but it doesn't come close to covering the 
full extent of the need. The American Council on Education had 
previously estimated that institutions and students will need 
at least $46.6 billion to address the challenges and 
disruptions created by COVID-19. And as of last week, ACE now 
estimates that institutions may need an additional $74 billion 
to cover just the costs of resuming in-person and hybrid 
instruction in the fall. In my district, the University of 
California, Riverside, has already experienced a revenue loss 
of $22 million.
    Now, my first question is for Chancellor White. It is good 
to see you, again, sir. Can you please tell us about the 
revenue losses that the Cal State system has suffered as a 
result of COVID-19?
    Dr. White? Chancellor White?
    Mr. White. I just had to hit my ``unmute'' button.
    Nice to see you again.
    Yes, so just in the spring term alone, the, sort of, 2-1/2 
months from March through the end--I guess 3 months, we had 
$337 million in loss across the California State University. 
That includes the increased cost of mitigating COVID with 
personal protective gear, buying laptops and WiFis and giving 
them to students and to faculty and staff and all of that. That 
was just a 3-month period of time, so about $100 million a 
month. We anticipate that rate to continue these next 12 
months.
    In addition to that, the State of California has cut our 
State appropriation by $299 million, which is 4.6 percent of 
our operating budget for next year. However, the Federal 
Government can play a role in reversing that. If there is 
another Federal stimulus package that is received in California 
before October 15--it is a reverse trigger proposal that the 
Governor has signed--then that cut in our State appropriation 
would be reversed for the next fiscal year, which would be 
enormously helpful, as you point out, to students that are 
first-generation and often of low income who need a little 
extra support in order to stay engaged with their studies.
    Mr. Takano. Thank you for that answer, Chancellor White. It 
is imperative for Congress to--for the Senate to act on, you 
know, future legislation that would address--and I know that we 
do much of that in the HEROES Act.
    Dr. Pierce, what are the revenue losses at your 
institution?
    Ms. Pierce. Yes. Thank you for that question.
    We are not a system, we are a stand-alone institution, so 
our numbers may sound small, but the impact is the same.
    We are looking at approximately $850,000 in just parking 
and auxiliary services alone. Our original fiscal year 2021 
budget was based on our enrollment being flat, meaning that we 
didn't anticipate growth nor loss, but now we are projecting a 
deficit of anywhere between 10 to 20 percent in enrollment. And 
that would essentially mean $4.2 million if we are down 10 
percent and $7.78 million if we experience a 20-percent loss.
    So that is a significant impact on our overall budget that 
we would have to mitigate in ways that would be very 
detrimental and painful for our students, faculties, and staff 
and have an overall impact on our community.
    Mr. Takano. Well, thank you for that, Dr. Pierce.
    And, Dr. Harper, my question to you is, what lessons can we 
learn from the last recession about the impact that State 
budget cuts have on college access, affordability, and quality?
    Mr. Harper. Sure. We can certainly learn from the last 
time, taking a largely raceless approach to correcting 
longstanding inequities is only going to, at best, sustain 
those inequities but perhaps even exacerbate them.
    So I think, as I documented in the 10 points in my written 
testimony, we have to bring a race-forward, race-salient lens 
to thinking about COVID-19 recovery. Because the truth is, we 
have way too much evidence to confirm that COVID-19 has had a 
racially disproportionate impact on communities of color. 
Therefore, it would be just really reckless of us to attempt to 
remedy those inequities in a largely raceless way.
    I am not suggesting that class and socioeconomic status is 
somehow unimportant, but there is a way that race and class 
commingle in these United States of America to, you know, 
really produce disparate outcomes for people of color.
    Mr. Takano. Thank you for that response.
    I see, Madam Chair, my time is up. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Takano.
    And now we are going to turn to Mr. Grothman, but 
beforehand, Mr. Guthrie, if you want to reclaim your 1 minute. 
And I guess I should reclaim my 1 minute too. But, Mr. Guthrie, 
go ahead if you need an extra minute.
    Let's see. Is Mr. Guthrie there?
    Perhaps Mr. Guthrie has left, so we will go on to Mr. 
Grothman. If Mr. Guthrie comes back later on, he can get his 1 
minute again.
    Mr. Grothman?
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you. I always love these kind of online 
things because we can see the beautiful decorating that we have 
in our Members' houses. So you do a very good job there. I 
appreciate looking at what is behind you. I am kind of in a 
boring conference room myself, but next time I will try to give 
you more interesting decor as well.
    Mr. Pulsipher, is all of your classes online?
    Mr. Pulsipher. Yes, they are.
    Mr. Grothman. Okay. Do you feel, compared to a traditional 
college, a higher percentage of your graduates come out with a 
skills-based education?
    Mr. Pulsipher. Yes, we do. Based upon the surveys that we 
utilize from Gallup and Harris and others is that there is a 
pretty good indication from the employers as well as the 
graduate surveys that our graduates are better prepared for the 
workforce. Ninety-seven percent of employers say that they meet 
or exceed expectations. Ninety-seven percent of employers would 
hire them again.
    I think that our alignment of the curriculum with the 
competencies needed in the workforce is significantly 
increasing the readiness of graduates.
    Mr. Grothman. Can you give me a comparative number, or is 
there a comparative number you have for other universities?
    Mr. Pulsipher. Yeah. There is, at least in our surveys, if 
I flip to our annual report, I would look at things like--so, 
in the Gallup--or, in Harris surveys, you know, if we look at 
graduates--you know, mentor--you know, was it worth the cost, 
our graduates are 77 percent versus nationally 38 percent. Did 
it prepare me for a job, 76 percent versus nationally I think 
it was below 50 percent. From an employers standpoint, you 
know, there is data like 97 percent of graduates from WGU 
exceed or meet expectations.
    The other Gallup survey is that--you know, I think the 
numbers, I think we could provide them and submit them to 
testimony after the fact, but I think--specifically on Gallup, 
I think it is more than twice as likely that our WGU grads are 
performing well in all five dimensions of well-being versus 
nationally.
    Mr. Grothman. Wow. That is pretty incredible. Do you think 
it is because you are online, or do you just think you approach 
your job with a different attitude, an attitude of a student-
first attitude? Do you think you could duplicate these 
fantastic numbers in a more traditional university if they 
would adopt the same interaction with their students?
    Mr. Pulsipher. You know, based upon the research from 
Gallup and others, there are probably three things that I do 
think should be considered.
    One is, how do you really think about the faculty 
engagement with students and make it more personal in the 
interaction, if you will. Like, the office hours and the one-
to-one interaction become vitally important because a lecture 
is just content online. And I could--
    Mr. Grothman. Do you steer your people more towards a 
skills-based education?
    Mr. Pulsipher. We are entirely competency-based in our 
design, such that as soon as you demonstrate proficiency 
against the learning outcomes you can progress. And so it is 
very clear that time now becomes a variable in most of our 
students' lives, versus sitting in a seat for the prescribed 15 
hours a week, you know, for 4 months.
    And so I think the mentoring, the faculty engagement model 
is highly important. And noted that if you have a faculty who 
encourages your dreams and aspirations, I believe Gallup noted 
that you are two and a half times more likely to say that your 
school is right for you.
    I also think college affordability factors heavily into 
graduate satisfaction and performance.
    And then, of course, designing curriculum and learning 
outcomes that are directly relevant and ready a graduate for 
success in the workforce, that also dramatically increases 
graduate and student satisfaction.
    I think we have opportunities to advance education's design 
in all of these dimensions.
    Mr. Grothman. Okay.
    I am particularly concerned with the middle-class students. 
You know, they don't get Pell grants, so really, in our 
society, we really put the middle-class students at a 
disadvantage.
    How do you deal with student debt? Or do you feel how the 
amount of student debt your middle-class students come out with 
is higher or lower compared to a traditional university?
    Mr. Pulsipher. We know for a fact it is actually lower. So 
57 percent of our students at WGU actually utilize aid in some 
form or receive aid in some form for their education at WGU. 
And, on average, you know, our graduates are graduating--I am 
just trying to find the specific statistics really quickly--
they are graduating with just over $12,000 in debt at 
graduation. That compares to nationally at $29,000 per 
graduate.
    More importantly, you can see that our cohort default rates 
and loan repayment rates among our graduates are also 
performing better than national averages. Our cohort default 
rate is just about 4 percent versus nationally at 10.8 percent.
    Mr. Grothman. Wow. Well, I guess what it means is we need--
do you ever think about setting up an Eastern Governors 
University?
    Mr. Pulsipher. The nice thing is, that didn't preclude us 
from serving students in all 50 States, so we have more 
students in the East than we do in the West.
    Mr. Grothman. Okay.
    I guess you are giving me the hook. Well--
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Mr. Grothman.
    Mr. Grothman.--thank you. And I would like to thank you 
again for letting us see your beautiful house. Very wonderful.
    Chairwoman Davis. We are happy to hear next from Chairman 
Scott, chairman of the Education and Labor Committee.
    Chairman Scott?
    Mr. Scott. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. And, 
certainly, thank you for holding this hearing.
    I would like to start with Dr. White.
    And you have talked about this a little bit, but can you 
tell us exactly what would happen if the cuts go through?
    I know we are dealing with this in Virginia. Our General 
Assembly passed a budget when we came back for the scheduled, 
what we call, veto session, where we consider Governor's vetoes 
and amendments. We learned a new word, ``unallocated.'' The 2-
percent teacher raise was unallocated. The counselors in the 
schools, the aid to low-income students in community colleges, 
construction of colleges, all unallocated because of the 
reforecast in revenues.
    We assume we will learn another word if the HEROES Act were 
to pass and the revenue were restored by Federal assistance, 
``reallocated.''
    So could you tell us what would happen if--who gets laid 
off and what effect it would have on education if the cuts 
actually remained?
    Mr. White. Yes. Thank you, Member.
    I think we have done several things to decrease our costs. 
We immediately put in a hiring freeze across the system. We 
have also banned travel, initially for health reasons and now 
for economic reasons. So when our various constituent groups 
gather, they are doing it virtually, going forward.
    We also have--during the last 8 years, as I have been 
chancellor, we have been in a position to grow, and we have put 
aside a reserve during that time, as has the State of 
California. And so we are going to be using some of that 
reserve, spending that down, in order to mitigate the costs. 
But there would also be some employee attrition issues that 
will lower our costs as well.
    So we think, you know, we will--our enrollments are steady 
here in the summertime, and all indications are for the fall 
they will remain steady. It is going to be variable across the 
campuses. Some of the urban ones are going up; some of the more 
rural ones are going down a little bit.
    But, overall, the cut from the State budget of $299 million 
can be reversed if Congress acts with the next Federal bill. 
And that will help us continue to make access in support of our 
students generally of low income and middle income, to the last 
member's questions, as well as to our students of color.
    So we think it is a very vital role for the Federal 
Government to play here. Asking the State to maintain efforts, 
so the State doesn't further cut us, but as these Federal 
dollars come in, it will make a huge difference for our 
students, going forward, earning their degrees.
    Mr. Scott. Thank you.
    Dr. Harper, are you familiar with the new regulation from 
the Department of Education making it harder to get a 
recalculation of your financial aid if you lose your job or 
have other reasons to want your aid recalculated?
    Mr. Harper. No. I haven't followed that legislation.
    Mr. Scott. Okay. They are making it harder. So the problem 
there would be, if you lose your job and are not able to make 
the anticipated contribution, obviously, if you can't 
recalculate the aid that is needed, bad things will happen. But 
if you are not familiar with that.
    Dr. Pierce, you talked about reopening. There are a lot of 
things--some things you didn't mention. How can you reopen 
without testing all of the students before day one?
    Ms. Pierce. Yes. Well, with us being a nonresidential 
campus, we would be following the guidelines provided by the 
CDC and the Minnesota State Health Department, which--the State 
of Minnesota is providing testing for those who want it and 
need it, and we are able to work in concert with them.
    So our screening procedures follow the guidelines from the 
CDC, the Minnesota State Department of Health, and the Office 
on Higher Ed.
    Mr. Scott. Does that include testing everyone before day 
one?
    Ms. Pierce. It does not.
    Mr. Scott. What about ventilation?
    Ms. Pierce. Yes. Well, part of our reopening is to look at 
air quality, because we are very much aware of the fact that--
it is something I recently learned, actually, is that we want 
to minimize any cross-ventilation, in terms of air moving from 
one geographic area to another. So we are looking at air 
quality, and we are also looking at space.
    So we are looking at our HVAC system and the quality of air 
in our HVAC system. And I have been actually learning quite a 
bit about it, in terms of MERV standards, which are a way of 
measuring air quality versus air efficiency.
    And so, as we are looking at--
    Mr. Scott. My time has expired, but one of the things about 
air conditioning is that they recirculate the air, which has 
been identified as problematic. If they pull the air out, then 
send it outside and, rather than recirculate, just cool the air 
the best they can, you are better off.
    But the ventilation has been identified as a problem. There 
are a lot of things about reopening that are problematic. And 
you are dealing with it the best you can, so I appreciate that.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Chairman Scott.
    Mr. Scott. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Davis. We now turn to Ms. Stefanik of New York 
for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Stefanik?
    We will go to Mr. Banks.
    Mr. Banks. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    I want to start with Mr. Pulsipher.
    Since many American families are above the Federal Pell 
grant-eligible income level, how can aid better be distributed 
to students who really need help to return to school in the 
fall?
    Mr. Pulsipher. Thank you for that question, Congressman.
    I do think that there is no doubt a short-term hardship 
that should be contemplated in considering how to support 
students who need to continue on their path.
    And so, even at WGU, while our institutional operational 
model has not been impacted, our students, given the 
disproportionate number that we serve in underserved 
categories, have been largely impacted by the economic fallout 
of the pandemic. And so there are considerations around, you 
know, supporting non-tuition-related expenses, whether that be 
housing, food, other necessities of life. We, ourselves, have 
established a $10 million aid fund and, in just the last 6 
weeks, have distributed aid to over 4,000 students.
    There are those things can be contemplated as we consider 
both short-term and long-term considerations that would not 
just only be related to, you know, Pell-eligible students but 
individuals who are trying to advance from lower-middle-income 
to upper-middle-income and how do you support that investment.
    One of the longer-term examples is something as simple as a 
lifetime learning account that can model after things like a 
health savings account or even, like, a home equity line of 
credit that just allows individuals to tap into needed aid to 
support their upskilling and reskilling that will be 
increasingly part of their life going forward.
    Mr. Banks. Very helpful.
    I want to turn my focus to a subject we haven't talked a 
great deal about yet today, and that is liability protections. 
All of your institutions belong to advocacy groups who have 
called for liability protections.
    And I want to go first to Dr. Pierce.
    Can you talk about how important are liability protections 
to reopen your institution for in-the-classroom training in the 
fall?
    Ms. Pierce. Thank you for that question.
    We are a State institution, so we are covered under the 
State of Minnesota. However, I am very much aware that 
institutions feel a great risk in terms of liability for 
opening, in terms of how they are going to be able to cover any 
lawsuits that may emerge as a result of students, faculty, and 
staff returning to campus who may come into contact with COVID-
19, who may have increased hospital bills and things of that 
nature.
    Even though the schools are following every guideline 
provided by the CDC, their individual State health departments, 
and the Office of Higher Education, the liability is there, the 
liability is real, and it has a chilling effect on our plans 
moving forward.
    Mr. Banks. Dr. White, could you weigh in on that subject as 
well?
    Mr. White. Our twin North Stars about moving to a primarily 
virtual fall term and, quite frankly, academic year was driven 
by the health and safety issues and our student progress to 
success, and health and safety issues not only for our students 
but for our faculty, our staff, and the communities. And our 
campuses in California are stretched over an 800-mile distance, 
from the north coast up in Arcadia down to San Diego State, 
and, you know, a lot of our students come from other parts of 
the State. So we are very concerned about those two things.
    We did not use liability as one of our determining factors 
to move to an essentially virtual fall and, quite frankly, 
academic year.
    You know, one of the issues here that I think is really 
important to recognize is, this pandemic is not--a lot of 
people are using past tense: ``How did you manage the 
pandemic?'' This is not a 2-month problem or a 6-month problem. 
This is, you know, a 12-, 18-, 24-month at a minimum problem. 
And in California we are approaching it that way.
    And so the flexibility around policies can't be 
shortsighted. Some of the recent policies that have come out 
that have undone some of that flexibility seem to be tone-deaf 
to the reality of the biology of the disease. That is something 
that we are not yet able to get our hands around.
    Mr. Banks. Mr. Pulsipher, your situation is different at 
WGU, but can you talk about how important liability protections 
would be for an institution like yours?
    Mr. Pulsipher. Yeah, Congressman, as you noted, obviously, 
with no in-person instruction and no campuses on which students 
congregate, this is not a circumstance that we understand all 
the variables at play and have considered. And so it is a topic 
that I would definitely defer to my colleagues that have 
campuses and have broader considerations there. I am not 
unaware of them, but it is not something that I personally have 
spent the time and attention and understanding the details to 
give a cogent answer to.
    Mr. Banks. Understood.
    Thank you very much. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Mr. Banks.
    And I now yield to Ms. Jayapal. Is Ms. Jayapal with us?
    If not, Mr. Harder, you have 5 minutes.
    Mr. Harder of California?
    Mr. Levin of Michigan.
    Mr. Levin. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. I am 
here, yes. Appreciate it. And I appreciate you convening this 
hearing on this super-important topic.
    You know, I want to get very concrete about the 
difficulties of running a university or a community college 
during this pandemic. And, as a Michigander, I want to mention 
the COVID-19 outbreak in East Lansing that has been linked to a 
popular bar near one of our great institutions, Michigan State 
University.
    As of July 6, yesterday, there had been 170 confirmed 
cases, 1-7-0, confirmed cases of COVID-19 linked to this one 
bar or restaurant, including 27 secondary cases, meaning people 
who did not visit that establishment but caught the virus from 
someone else who did.
    The entire Lansing region has been moved back into the 
high-risk category of our Governor, Gretchen Whitmer's 
reopening plan, given the enormous impact of this outbreak. 
This is over just an 8-day period following that restaurant's 
reopening, and it has since closed again.
    I bring this up because it is a cautionary tale of the risk 
involved in reopening college campuses this fall. We can't just 
think about classrooms and dorms; colleges anchor entire 
communities--restaurants, bars, stores, and so on. Cases of 
COVID-19 within a student body or faculty aren't going to stay 
within a campus's walls.
    Many reopening plans developed by institutions center 
around the need to test students, test faculty, test staff to 
contain cases of COVID-19 on campuses. However, estimates show 
that the testing capacity in most States is still far below 
what is needed to contain the virus. And, in fact, the lack of 
adequate testing is the lead story in today's New York Times.
    Dr. White, when you decided to remain online for this fall 
and, as you say, perhaps the whole academic year, did testing 
capacity and possible scenarios like the situation in East 
Lansing play into that decision at all?
    Mr. White. Absolutely, it did, Congressman Levin.
    I mean, Jiminy Christmas, when you are having a whole--we 
are responsible for well over 530,000 people, with our 
employees and with our students, let alone, to your point 
exactly, what is happening in East Lansing and the communities 
where we are embedded. We came up with a number of $50 million 
a month to do testing on a routine basis, which is just not in 
the cards.
    And, quite frankly, to your point, if you test today and 
you are negative and it is an accurate test, that doesn't mean 
you don't pick it up tomorrow, right?
    Mr. Levin. Right.
    Mr. White. So we have gone to the notion of really anywhere 
from about 3 or 4 percent to maybe 10 percent of our courses 
are going to be in-person. They are the laboratories, they are 
the healthcare training where they work on mannequins, et 
cetera. But everything else will be done in the virtual space 
because of the cost and the inefficiency, really, of helping 
solve this and keeping the disease under control for our 
students.
    But we have--like, 25 percent of our employees are in their 
60s and above. We are responsible for them.
    Mr. Levin. And you consulted with faculty and staff when 
you made your decision as well, I assume.
    Mr. White. Faculty, staff, students, local public health 
officials, epidemiologists, and infectious disease experts in 
the State government, yes. Broad consultation across the 
system.
    Mr. Levin. As you say, it seems like you could easily see 
what is happening in East Lansing play out at any college bar 
in the country or even at a party, you know, on a campus 
anywhere.
    So let me ask Dr. Pierce, if we improved testing and stood 
up a nationwide contact tracing program, do you think school 
administrators like yourself around the whole country would 
feel better equipped to reopen, knowing there is an 
infrastructure in place to contain outbreaks?
    I am talking about, Dr. Pierce, you know, the Federal 
Government fully taking responsibility, saying, ``We will have 
a national contact tracing and testing program in place.'' 
Would that affect your decision-making?
    Ms. Pierce. I believe it would. I think that, you know, we 
follow the guidelines provided for us by the State of 
Minnesota, the CDC, and the Office on Higher Ed, but having a 
robust screening and testing policy and practice in place would 
certainly play into our total decision-making and make us feel 
a lot safer about welcoming our students to campus.
    You know, our whole guidelines are based on the health and 
safety of our employees, and so anything that would enhance 
that would be welcome.
    Mr. Levin. Thank you so much.
    As I hear, Madam Chairwoman--
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you.
    Mr. Levin.--my time has expired. I will just say that I 
feel so badly, as a Member of Congress, which is supposed to 
govern our whole country, that we are putting these wonderful 
administrators of our great universities and community colleges 
into this position of having to deal with this pandemic when we 
are not providing the national infrastructure of public health 
that we are capable of providing that would help them so much.
    And, with that, I yield back.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Mr. Levin.
    Mr. Cline?
    Mr. Cline. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Davis. Mr. Cline of Virginia, please go ahead.
    Mr. Cline. Great. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    You know, as we are adjusting to this new normal, as they 
call it--I am not partial to that term, but some are calling it 
that--it is important that we evaluate how this pandemic has 
impacted the traditional way higher education has been 
delivered to students and how it will continue to transform 
moving forward.
    Online learning is one of many approaches that has proven 
to be successful in its implementation, and exploring 
opportunities for expansion presents a promising alternative to 
in-person classes during this time of increased virtual 
connections.
    You know, not only does it allow students flexibility in 
their individual response to COVID, it solves many of the 
contributing disparities to educational access that minorities 
and those of lower socioeconomic classes face by eliminating 
certain barriers. But it does create new ones, as was already 
discussed, in relation to the lack of broadband access.
    Online learning offers more affordable options that can be 
customized to meet individual schedules, allowing for continued 
learning to be a viable option for those who are balancing 
other commitments like caring for family or holding a job.
    Prior to the pandemic, 20 percent of student loan borrowers 
were behind on their payments. And this further emphasizes the 
importance of affordable and flexible education, particularly 
as student debt has climbed over $1.5 trillion.
    When I served in the Virginia General Assembly before 
coming to Congress, I authored a bill inspired by the Western 
Governors University structure that directed the Virginia 
Secretary of Education and the State Council of Higher 
Education to work with Virginia public colleges and any private 
colleges who were willing to develop a program for an online 
degree with a lower cost--at that point, $4,000 per academic 
year. Virginia is blessed with many great institutions of 
higher education, and it is important that they are affordable 
and accessible to students. And I am committed to continuing to 
work on ways to incentivize these types of innovative paths 
forward while I serve in Congress.
    So I will ask President Pulsipher, I know you mentioned 77 
percent of WGU alumni respondents reported that their education 
was worth the cost, compared to the national average of 38 
percent. That is a testament to the work you have put forward.
    Can you--let's see. I want to ask, you know, as the COVID 
pandemic disrupted lives across the country, you know, you note 
in your testimony that many people need mid-career reskilling. 
But what are some barriers stopping people from seeking 
additional skills-based education? And how can Congress help 
people whose lives were disrupted by the pandemic-caused 
economic downturn?
    Mr. Pulsipher. Thank you, Congressman Cline, for that 
question.
    I think one of the--there is increasing evidence for sure 
that learning to earning, if you will, or educational work is 
absolutely the loop of what adults are going to go through in 
the future. And some of the barriers are simply what is the 
program design and whether those programs are eligible for 
Federal aid that many of our lower- and middle-skilled workers 
actually need to advance their careers and professions.
    And so, for example, many such programs, whether they are 
apprenticeship in design or short form in duration, whether 
they be technical, coding bootcamp models, or short micro-
credentials, as they are often referred to, these often don't 
meet the eligibility requirements, whether it is full-time 
attendance or whether it is elements related to a degree 
seeking a credential model that is a credit-hour-based model.
    And so these aren't typically contemplated within the scope 
of Federal regulation that governs higher education. Higher 
education generally is oriented towards the notion of a first-
time, full-time student who is pursuing an associate's or a 
degree of some sort.
    And what we are seeing is that employers are now 
increasingly entering into this space and providing employer-
led training programs, paid internships, apprenticeships, or 
even partnering with technical colleges that are advancing the 
availability of these programs.
    Those are opportunities for us to address not only the 
first-time students but also the reskilling/upskilling 
students.
    Mr. Cline. Thank you. I appreciate it.
    I yield back.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cline.
    And I now turn to Mr. Sablan from the Mariana Islands.
    Mr. Sablan, you have 5 minutes.
    Mr. Sablan. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    And I thank the witnesses all for their participation 
today.
    My questions are generally directed for Dr. Pierce and Dr. 
White, and then I have other questions that I will submit for 
the record.
    So the CARES Act provided over, what, $14 billion in 
emergency support to institutions and students to address the 
immediate impacts of the pandemic? Colleges are required to use 
at least half of the funds they receive on emergency financial 
aid support for students, while the other half can be spent on 
institution expenses associated with the change in delivery of 
education resulting from COVID-19.
    So when distribution of other CARE funds from the 
administration to my districts, the Northern Marianas, were 
delayed, direct student relief payments became the first 
injection of economic stimulus for individuals in the Marianas 
since the beginning of the pandemic.
    So I would like to hear from Dr. Pierce and Dr. White about 
how they have used the Federal funding that they have received 
to date.
    Would you both speak briefly to how you approached the 
awarding of the emergency grants on your campuses? 
Specifically, I would like to hear about how you identified and 
prioritized the students with the most need in awarding 
emergency aid; how have you used the institutional share of 
CARES funding that you received; and what other activities and 
services would you fund if you could access additional Federal 
support, like in the HEROES Act.
    Thank you.
    Ms. Pierce. Thank you for the question.
    We considered the funding in terms of the intent from 
Congress to meet the needs of students and especially students 
who had higher need levels, and also students' credit load 
because that was part of the funding formula.
    So we identified eligible students, and they each received 
a base award of $100. Then Pell-eligible students received 
additional supplemental funds based on credits enrolled and a 
percent of the total share.
    Then we also withheld a percentage of the total grant so 
that we could award additional funding based on a short 
application to meet additional needs, such as housing, food, 
basic needs, childcare, technology, transportation, and things 
of that nature.
    And so that is how we disbursed the funds, because it was 
very important for us to use an equity lens in distributing the 
funds.
    Mr. Sablan. Thank you--
    Ms. Pierce. We used additional funds--sorry?
    Mr. Sablan. No, no. Go ahead, Dr. Pierce. Please.
    Ms. Pierce. We have used additional funds to pay for 
increased costs--the funds that were in the second half of the 
funding--that arose, such as cleaning supplies, laptop rentals 
for our students, access to library services and licenses and 
things of that nature, software licenses, internet access, 
additional computers, and notes for students who didn't have 
access to set up hotspots.
    And we anticipate spending a significant amount of the 
COVID funds for instructional costs because of the restrictions 
that we must operate under because of COVID.
    Mr. Sablan. Okay.
    And this may be below Dr. White's pay grade, but do you 
have any comments, Dr. White? Do you have anything to add to 
what Dr. Pierce just said, please?
    Mr. White. Well, we distributed $263 million in direct 
student funding directly to financial institutions so our 
students, even those who lack documentation, could access the 
funds. This goes to our deep-seated commitment to inclusive 
excellence and equity, to student success--we wanted to make 
sure that students who were enrolled to make progress to 
degree--and administrative simplicity.
    So our awards ranged anywhere from $500 to up to over 
$5,000. And we used--within the Pell student body, which is 
over 60 percent of our students, we used those with the least 
expected family contribution first and worked our way up from 
the bottom up until we ran out of money. Equity, ease, and 
simplicity and accountability were the ways in which we 
distributed those funds.
    And on the university side, just like Dr. Pierce, we are 
using it for COVID-19-induced additional expenses across our 23 
institutions and--
    Mr. Sablan. Yeah. And, Dr. White, you have a student 
population that is just as great as the district I represent in 
number. And I know; I have been to your institution, your 
system.
    I have additional questions to ask, and I will submit it 
for the record. If you could provide a brief response to them, 
I would appreciate it.
    Thank you.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you.
    Mr. Sablan. I hate that bell.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Mr. Sablan.
    And now, I believe, Dr. Murphy? Dr. Murphy of North 
Carolina? I know he was here earlier. I don't see him.
    Mr. Smucker, I am going to go on to the rest of the 
Democrats that are there. I just want to be sure that--whether 
or not you have someone on your side.
    Mr. Smucker. Chairwoman Davis, Dr. Murphy does appear to be 
still available in the participant list.
    Chairwoman Davis. Oh, okay. Great.
    Dr. Murphy, are you there?
    Well, we will come back to Dr. Murphy.
    Mr. Smucker. Madam Chair, Mr. Watkins was on previously as 
well. I don't know if he still is.
    Chairwoman Davis. Oh, okay.
    . Dr. Murphy is visible.
    Chairwoman Davis. Oh, terrific. Okay. I am going to go back 
to the grid, because I didn't see him.
    . Dr. Murphy, you will need to unmute, sir.
    Mr. Murphy. I consider myself unmuted.
    Chairwoman Davis. Great. Dr. Murphy, you have 5 minutes.
    Mr. Murphy. All right.
    Thank you guys very much for your time.
    I want to actually ask different members of the committee 
to answer this question. I am really concerned, and help me 
walk through this, because I think we have lost a little bit, 
in higher education, a little bit about what our purpose is, in 
some ways.
    And I want to say that, you know, a lot of the industries 
and everything--obviously, the Nation has been hit with a 
calamity the likes of which we didn't expect this anymore. So, 
you know, we want to train and educate our individuals that go 
off to colleges and universities to lead lives of constant 
learning. And that is what it is. It is not technical school 
per se. It is allowing critical minds to think.
    And I am wondering, though, that, in and of itself, though, 
where industry is exampled, we have times where we have to cut 
our belts and, you know, trim our fat. And given the fact that 
money now flows very, very freely from the Federal Government 
to colleges and universities, really with no strings attached, 
I am wondering what suggestions each of you could offer that 
colleges and universities could tighten their belt, areas that 
they could.
    Where, heretofore, it has been basically a blank check from 
the Federal Government, and now, given the shortage that is 
happening across every industry in the country, where colleges 
and universities will fall in that line.
    So, if everybody could just do it in sequence, I look 
forward to your responses.
    Mr. Harper. Sure. I will weigh in on this one first. I want 
to acknowledge that so many college and university presidents, 
as well as campus reopening task forces, are working incredibly 
hard, and they are figuring out how to bring recovery plans to 
life, understanding that there are going to be really tight 
fiscal constraints.
    I wonder if, instead, that energy might be better placed on 
figuring out how to effectively educate students in a virtual 
environment, at least for this fall semester, and thinking 
about how to do that well. It feels to me like that is a much 
less expensive project in terms of both the expenditure of 
human and fiscal resources.
    I, frankly, find it annoying that so many campuses are 
scrambling to figure out how to play football this fall and how 
to ensure physical distancing in stadiums. It just feels to me 
like the money would be better spent trying to figure out how 
to close the digital equity access gaps and, again, how to 
better prepare faculty to teach online, at least for this fall 
semester.
    Ms. Pierce. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Harper, for your 
comments. I would like to just speak from the point of a 
community and technical college in terms of that is exactly 
where we are spending our time, our effort, and our resources 
in figuring out how to make sure that our students have the 
same quality level of an online experience, hybrid experience 
that they would have [inaudible] delivering instruction.
    However, there are some career and technical programs that 
simply cannot be offered in an online environment. For example, 
Air Force--I am sorry--aircraft maintenance technicians. 
External accrediting bodies and the work that they must do 
requires that they be face-to-face with their instructors so 
that they can demonstrate a level that is acceptable for the 
FAA. So it is incumbent upon us to spend the time and the 
resources to make sure that we are able to deliver that type of 
instruction to students in a safe environment that protects the 
faculty and staff who work in those programs. .
    For example, [inaudible] that is another career program 
that absolutely requires face-to-face interaction.
    So we are balancing the needs of our students, the needs of 
other programs, the needs of an external accrediting bodies so 
that we can meet our mission. Those are all incredibly 
important things for us to do. We are balancing the need to 
control spending by delaying and [inaudible] or different types 
of instruction programs that need--
    Mr. Murphy. Thank you. I want to make sure everybody gets a 
chance, and I appreciate the answer. Thank you.
    Mr. White. Congressman Murphy, Tim White here. An educated 
citizenry is a public good. Equity matters. So Federal funds 
for Pell and for MSIs and for [inaudible] institutions matter. 
Education really is a matter of social justice at all times and 
particularly--
    Mr. Murphy. Let me ask you this. I get all the matters 
stuff. I get all the matters stuff. How are you going to trim 
costs?
    Mr. White. We have trimmed costs by decreasing hiring, 
decreasing travel, going together with other universities on 
procurement at better rates, and eliminating unnecessary 
activities that can be postponed in terms of construction and 
maintenance. But it is really important to recognize that the 
investment by the Feds is an investment in the Nation's future. 
Unemployment is one half if you have a college degree versus 
not in any given rate of unemployment. So let's not be looking 
just at the cost. Let's look at the return on investment.
    Mr. Murphy. I understand that. I understand that. I have a 
terminal degree, so I appreciate that.
    One other individual. Can we get our other--our four.
    Mr. Pulsipher. Thank you, Congressman Murphy. I think to 
get to the heart of your question, one of the considerations 
should be simply to consider what is the percent of an 
operating budget that is directly on instruction and advancing 
student outcomes and the attainment of their credentials. And 
then the question would be, like, for those costs that are not 
related to instruction, what are the revenue sources for those?
    I would just echo what Dr. Harper had said, which is, you 
know, the emphasis and the priority, I think, should really be 
focusing on how does an increasing percentage of operating 
budgets focus on teaching and the transfer of learning to the 
individuals who are seeking and acquiring a credential? There 
is no doubt that universities have taken on many different 
purposes and missions, if you will. Much of that is emerging 
life--emerging adult experience, but that can be a very costly 
undertaking with a very different operating and economic model 
that now has been disrupted by COVID. And so I think one of the 
considerations is what percent of operating budgets are 
dedicated to instruction and is increasing probability of 
outcomes.
    Chairman Davis. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Murphy. I yield the balance of my time. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Dr. Murphy.
    I now move to Mr. Harder. Mr. Harder of California.
    Mr. Harder. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Madam 
Chairwoman.
    Chairwoman Davis. You have 5 minutes.
    Mr. Harder. Well, thank you. Thank you so much to the panel 
for participating.
    In my district, schools are right now announcing their 
efforts to resume on-campus instruction. What exactly that is 
going to look like this fall, clearly, it is going to be very 
different from what it might have been last year. And while our 
CSU, Stan State, will hold classes primary online, I think it 
is really important to make sure that our educators and their 
families and the students themselves are getting guidance for 
reopening.
    I wrote a letter to Secretary DeVos, with bipartisan 
support, asking for guidance from the Department of Education, 
and I continue to hear from teachers and parents that this is 
their top concern, that as we are going through this reopening 
process, that we are making sure that we are doing it safely 
with the right guidance to folks on the front lines.
    Dr. White, my first question is for you. Reopening is 
really going to be uncharted territory, whether schools choose 
to do so in the fall semester or if they choose to do so later 
on. What measures, what guidance and support would you hope to 
see from the Department of Education in advance of resuming on-
campus classes?
    Mr. White. Well, I think, you know, the CDC has been 
helpful with their guidelines for--and they are guidelines. And 
the thing that I think really matters here is there is such 
variability across the State of California, let alone across 
the country, with respect to disease progression. We cannot 
change the biology of the disease, but what we can do is change 
the human behavior around that biology. And here in California, 
and others have commented in other States in the Union, where 
things have started to reescalate again.
    We imagine another bump later this summer. We have a 
forecast that is a very strong forecast of a greater wave of 
this disease, coupled with influenza, come October, November, 
and another wave coming in sort of March, April. So our 
planning horizon has been for the longer term rather than 
trying to figure out how we get through the next 2 weeks or 2 
months. And I think that is a fundamental mindset that took a 
while through collaboration with our faculty, staff, students, 
and communities to go from how do we preserve in-person to how 
do we move to a virtual and then back away from that as the 
disease progression allows us to do, a fundamentally different 
approach.
    Mr. Harder. That is helpful. And my next question, and it 
actually comes from that. It is around connectivity. I think 
making sure that we have the right infrastructure in place is 
going to be really important. This pandemic has exposed the 
digital divide in rural areas such as my district. The 
president of Stan State shared with me that she is concerned by 
the lack of access to WiFi and internet. In the 21st century, 
lack of internet access for our students is simply not 
acceptable.
    Dr. White, what can the CSU system do to help connect 
students in these areas to internet, and what can the Federal 
Government do to support you in those efforts?
    Mr. White. Well, I think as a university, you know, we have 
had a lot of our campuses create WiFi spots in their parking 
lots, provide security services in the parking lots so students 
that drive stay by themselves in their car and do their work. 
There is the edge of roam internet capability that perhaps a 
college student from Stan State could be close to an elementary 
school somewhere in Sacramento or down in Fresno and still get 
access to the internet.
    The Governor's Council on Postsecondary Education that 
Gavin Newsom appointed myself and other heads of public and 
private higher education in the State has made getting rid of 
the broadband digital divide one of the top priorities for 
California. This is a place where I think Federal investment 
could help jump-start that, if you will, to get more dollars 
into getting rid of this digital divide [inaudible] achieve for 
equity and social responsibility going forward is to remove 
that divide.
    Mr. Harder. Thank you. That is a big focus for a lot of 
students in our area.
    Finally, Dr. Harper, I have a question for you. We know the 
Great Recession disproportionately impacted education in 
underserved communities with reduced enrollment, higher dropout 
rates, even students graduating with large debts and no jobs to 
pay back those student loans. What can we do to better support 
our students in this pandemic?
    Mr. Harper. I think it is important for us to get ahead of 
the predicted outcomes and recognizing that in prior periods, 
everything that you just named had a disproportionate effect on 
people of color and certainly lower income people of color. And 
response effort, we will [inaudible] in our recovery efforts.
    Mr. Harder. Thank you.
    With that, I yield back. Thank you so much to our panel, 
and thank you, Madam Chairman.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Mr. Harder.
    And I believe Mr. Watkins of Kansas is with us. Mr. 
Watkins, you have 5 minutes.
    Mr. Watkins. That is right. Thank you very much. Thanks to 
the panel for offering your time and expertise.
    Mr. Pulsipher, what are the practical ways colleges can 
remain affordable for students? Has the pandemic changed that 
or created any new changes to making schools more affordable?
    Mr. Pulsipher. I do think the pandemic has accelerated a 
trend towards an increasing kind of digitally native approach 
to things. Digitally native means how do you really leverage 
technology in advancing the student's ability to access, 
afford, and experience education. There is no doubt that when 
you have a digitally native approach to things, that you are 
going to remove a lot of elements of an operating budget that 
aren't necessary to that.
    I think that has definitely been one of our core models is 
that how do you, you know, focus the largest percent of your 
operating budget specifically on instruction. How do you make 
it more interactive with faculty? How do you provide more--a 
higher student-to-faculty ratio? How do you make sure that the 
technology is accessible anytime, anywhere so that students can 
learn independent of time and place?
    A lot of those elements that are addressing things that are 
not related to the acquisition, knowledge, skills, and 
abilities that they need in their credentials, and so you can 
take that out of the cost. Ultimately, we are at this point 
where I think we are fundamentally going to start addressing 
the arc of the cost curve in higher education and bending it 
down rather than just finding out or, you know, devising new 
funding and financing mechanisms to afford ever-increasing 
costs. So those are opportunities that are now being 
accelerated because of this rapid shift to digital.
    And to Dr. Harper's point, I would simply add that the 
investment required to enable and expand the digital 
infrastructure necessary to cover 100 percent of our 
individuals in America would be far less than investing in 
campuses and buildings, et cetera, to try to make a campus 
available within 15 minutes of every person. Like, you can now 
bring education to every American. How to invest in making sure 
that, you know, the cellular networks, the high-speed internet, 
fiberoptic cables, whatever it may be, is fully accessible and 
aid programs to cover technology, you know, devices, et cetera, 
that are necessary for students to learn. And that hasn't 
typically been contemplated, but yet we are willing to afford 
accommodations for housing and living and other things like 
that can be very expensive.
    Mr. Watkins. Understood. Thank you. And you did touch on 
this in your answer, but I would like you to maybe think of any 
other mistakes institutions of higher learning are making with 
respect to their business models, and can those schools do 
better to adopt to the changing landscape in the postsecondary 
instruction?
    Mr. Pulsipher. Well, I think the first and most important 
thing is to really as an institution ask yourself the question 
of what is your primary purpose and how are you solving for 
that purpose, and let everything else become secondary to that. 
And if your primary purpose is fundamentally about teaching 
individuals and helping them achieve the credential they came 
to achieve, then you are going to focus all of your faculty 
design, your costs in investment model, your, you know, 
pedagogical engagement, peer-to-peer interactions around 
learning. And when you do that, I think you can start to slough 
off a lot of investments that may remove that.
    You know, quite frankly, because we were designed in the 
age of the internet, we view place-based classrooms, campuses 
constraints to access. We also view them as constraints to even 
advancing the quality of instruction and learning because you 
can now personalize in a way learning in an online, you know, 
digitally native environment that you can't necessarily do in a 
classroom of 30, 100, or even 500 students. And so I think it 
is just an opportunity for leaders and for the individuals like 
yourselves and legislators and regulators to consider how is 
technology shaping the future of how [inaudible] education.
    Mr. Watkins. All right. Thank you, sir, and that is all I 
have got.
    I yield back.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Mr. Watkins.
    We now turn to Mrs. Lee of Nevada. Mrs. Lee, you have 5 
minutes.
    Mrs. Lee. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I would 
like to thank all the panelists for their insight today.
    I represent southern Nevada, and we were hit, obviously, 
during the Great Recession, and now are impacted tremendously 
during this time. And what the Great Recession taught us, it 
was a lot that may be happening now in the higher education 
space and in our economy.
    Following that recession, many people sought out quick 
opportunities to gain skills and training in order to rejoin 
the workforce. This trend was also coupled with loosened 
accountability standards which resulted in exponential growth 
of for-profit colleges. In southern Nevada alone, we saw 30 
for-profit schools close within the last 10 years. Data 
suggests we are seeing this pattern again now, and we know the 
track record of for-profit colleges and their predatory tactics 
used to defraud students.
    In particular, Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech are a 
couple of institutions that abruptly closed their doors, 
leaving tens of thousands of students strapped with worthless 
degrees and mounds of debt. Unfortunately, Secretary DeVos' 
borrower defense role has made it nearly impossible for them to 
seek relief for this burden, setting the precedent that 
fraudulent bad actor schools are coddled by the government 
while students and taxpayers are stuck footing the bill.
    I would like to ask this question of Dr. Harper, and others 
are welcome to chime in. What do you think Congress can do 
right now to prevent predatory bad actor schools from preying 
on students during this recession?
    Mr. Harper. I think that the Obama administration began to 
make some really serious traction on this, and obviously lots 
of those efforts have been rolled back. I think we need to 
restore those efforts. You know, I think about this, and I care 
very deeply about it, because we know that it is people of 
color, and more specifically, low-income women of color, single 
mothers, working mothers, who are really the targets of the 
predatory practices. We owe it to those women of color to 
safeguard them from, you know, being preyed upon when they are 
most vulnerable.
    As we see joblessness rates increase across the country, 
who is most affected? African Americans. So when those people 
are out of work and, you know, thinking about, you know, being 
out of work, affording them an opportunity to upskill, reskill, 
you know, pursue higher education, we must protect them from 
being preyed upon by for-profit institutions.
    Mrs. Lee. I will move on to Dr. Pierce. How does the 
Department's failure to protect students from predatory actors 
hurt the ability of community colleges to serve these students?
    Ms. Pierce. It has a severe impact on our ability to serve 
the students. They arrive, having used up a great deal of their 
Pell eligibility or having used up all of their Pell 
eligibility. They also frequently arrive already in debt, 
because they have also taken on additional debt in addition to 
having used up their Pell eligibility. They arrive with credits 
or credentials that don't lead to a degree, that don't lead to 
a living wage, and it makes it very difficult to serve the 
students, and it limits what they are able to do.
    So they start 10 feet behind the start line, and it is 
just--it makes it that much more difficult for them to move 
forward to get to a place where they are able to actually 
complete a credential and earn a living wage. So instead of a 
program maybe taking 12 months, it takes 24 months, and they 
are steadily increasing their debt. They started out with a 
deficit to begin with.
    Mrs. Lee. Thank you.
    Just one final question. The pandemic has brought obviously 
great uncertainty, and we have seen many choosing to delay or 
forego college altogether, and I am concerned that some 
students may never return. I am even more concerned about 
figuring out exactly who these students are. We know that FAFSA 
renewals among students of low-income families has dropped 
about 8 percent compared to the same time last year.
    Dr. Pierce and Dr. White, have your institutions seen a 
decline in enrollment, and can you expound upon what type of 
student you have seen a decline in?
    Mr. White. At the California State University, we have not 
seen a decline in enrollment, but that is because of a massive 
effort by our faculty, staff, and administrators to reach out 
and re-create in a virtual space all the sort of things that 
students, first-time students as well as returning students, 
expect from us as some of the bridge programs, you know, 
courses established, et cetera, et cetera. So that is our 
approach.. So far, so good. We will know in the fall how it 
works out. That is the direction of where we are headed.
    Mrs. Lee. Well, that is good news. Thank you.
    My time is up, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Lee.
    Mr. Meuser of Pennsylvania, I believe you are there.
    Mr. Meuser. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very 
much. To our witnesses, thank you very much for being with us 
and for your important information on this important topic.
    Over the last 30 years, public schools costs for tuition, 
room and board, total costs tripled after being adjusted for 
inflation, and private schools have doubled. Now, I certainly 
know the argument. I was on our State board of--the public 
schools went up and cost more because in some States, there 
were cutbacks in education funding from the States. But even if 
it is double after being adjusted for inflation, in the 
business world, costs largely due to technology and 
efficiencies remained--were cut in many cases or remained 
relatively neutral outside of, of course, payroll costs.
    So I would just ask Mr. Pulsipher to start off with. Seeing 
your background as a business person, you were in the 
technology field. You are now head of a school--of a college, 
an online college. How do you explain that, the high level of 
increased costs over the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years to 
virtually all higher education universities and colleges?
    Mr. Pulsipher. Yeah. It is a much longer answer than time 
allows, but maybe let me just highlight two things that I think 
about. One is there is an investment or an asset and operating 
model, the utilization of which doesn't support the total 
consumption. And so that when you consider that for most 
classroom or campus-based, residence-based models of that, you 
really have to dramatically increase the utilization so that 
you can get the long-run average cost curve to decline. 
Otherwise, the support and operations for the buildings, for 
the facilities, for the student life housing, et cetera, like, 
that is an ever-increasing cost, and it is very difficult to 
not let enrollment grow with it such that if you fix 
enrollment, you are not going to grow the revenue to cover that 
increasing cost, and there is the dynamic of that economic 
model.
    The other important thing to note is that over the last 
several decades, the percentage of operating budgets that is 
spent on instruction has been declining over time, and the 
emerging expenses that are spent on student life or even 
research and athletics and other things, that has been growing 
as a percent of operating revenue.
    There is one other dynamic that I don't think is often 
talked about, which is this notion that quality is somehow 
measured by scarcity or exclusivity, such that in that model 
that you have this perverse behavior where if you actually 
increase price, the perception of quality goes up such that 
demand goes up. And so you have this weird model in higher 
education that there is no constraints, if you will, on the 
educational institutions to raise their price and having no 
impact on demand. I can go on unbridled.
    Mr. Meuser. Well, what is more of a concern is a student 
comes in, whether the university costs $25,000 a year or 
$60,000 a year, and what seems to be--and I don't get good 
answers on this in previous testimony. When you review their 
major, how much guidance is received? You take their major into 
consideration. You take the level of loans that they are taking 
out, the student's feedback on whether or not they are on track 
to achieve that major in a 4-year period, you know, loans 
outstanding. So there is no big surprises at the end that they 
can't get a job for more than $38,000 a year, say, in many 
cases, and yet they have $60,000 in loans.
    Now, it doesn't seem to me, I am going to ask you all, is 
that type of feedback strong [inaudible] feel a responsibility 
to be providing that feedback to the students?
    Mr. White. Congressman Meuser, this is Tim White. Our 
tuition and fees is $7,300 a year. More than half of our 
students graduate without debt, and those that do have debt, it 
is well below the national average; we're about $17,000 in 
debt. With the analytics, we provide a lot of advice as 
students pursue their dreams, keeping them on track to degree. 
We have had a graduation initiative in place now for several 
years, and we are having all-time highs in any way you 
calculate graduation rates.
    Finally, in terms of bending the cost curve, it is just not 
the online colleges that can do that. During the last 8 years, 
at this CSU, we raised tuition one time for $237 in 9 years. 
And we were certainly--before COVID, we had returned and had a 
post-recession budget, and yet we were serving 40,000 more 
students every year and graduating 35,000 more students every 
year than we did before. So there are ways of bending the cost 
curve and keeping costs down to the States, [inaudible] but you 
have to be intentional about it. We have been [inaudible]
    Mr. Meuser. Thank you, and congratulations. Those are good 
stats. Appreciate it. Thank you.
    I yield back, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Mr. Meuser.
    And, Ms. Bonamici, you now have 5 minutes.
    Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much. And thanks to the chair 
and ranking member and to all the witnesses.
    Just to follow up on the comment from my colleague and 
Chancellor White's response, the value that people contribute 
to our communities and to our society is not necessarily 
measured in the amount of their salary, which is exactly why we 
have things like the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.
    But I want to start by saying that technology and online 
learning have a place, especially during a global pandemic. I 
would be very concerned if we are having a conversation about 
the trend of higher education moving to online learning. 
Portland State University here in Oregon just did a survey of 
their students. 70 percent responded that they had a challenge 
with the transition to remote learning. 82 percent had 
difficulties focusing on remote instruction and prefer face-to-
face learning. Importantly, 50 percent said they don't have 
access to reliable internet service. And a third of the 
students with accessibility accommodations said they had very 
serious challenges with accommodations. So we know that there 
are a lot of inequities in higher education even before the 
pandemic, and the pandemic has exacerbated so many of those.
    I have spoken with college students pre-coronavirus about 
the challenges of housing, of food insecurity, child care for 
students who are parents. And now with most classes moving 
online or moved online and most campus housing and dining halls 
closed, students are really facing these sudden emergency 
expenses. And we know historically unrepresented students have 
been underrepresented, have been disproportionately affected, 
as Dr. Harper talked about. A recent Hope Center survey found a 
19 percentage point gap in basic needs insecurity between Black 
students and their White peers.
    So, Dr. Harper, can you talk more about the nontuition 
expenses and how those contribute to gaps? And I really want to 
get in time for another question, but I would like your input 
on that, please.
    Mr. Harper. Sure. I will be concise. It is really important 
to think about the important work that colleges like Compton 
College do to ensure that students have their transportation 
needs met, that they have access to food and so on, and that we 
don't have a solution for that, necessarily, if we go too far 
online. I do think that Compton College really stepped up and, 
you know, in a really impressive way during the pandemic to, 
you know, partner with GrubHub and with other institutes to get 
meals to students and their families, but I am not sure that 
kind of model necessarily is scalable.
    What I think is more scalable is what Compton College was 
doing before the pandemic, where they were centralizing those 
resources. So we need more of that as we return to campuses, at 
some point. We need a serious strategy to continue to meet 
students' basic needs.
    Ms. Bonamici. I appreciate that. And I also very much 
appreciate, Dr. Harper, your statement that higher education is 
a public good, and I think certainly Chancellor White 
established that with his comments about what is happening in 
the California system.
    I was a State legislator during the Great Recession and 
know how hard it can be to balance the budget. But I am also a 
graduate of a community college, a public university, and a 
public law school, and recognize the value of these 
institutions and the detriment to students when education 
budgets are cut. So we did provide some funding in the 
bipartisan CARES Act, but I know that is not enough, as Mr. 
Takano discussed.
    What specifically--and this is to Dr. Harper and Dr. Pierce 
and Chancellor White, if there is time. What specifically is 
needed to make sure that higher education institutions can 
continue to provide academic programming? And I want to 
emphasize that is to all students, and close those equity gaps 
that are so, so critical. And maybe we will start with Dr. 
Pierce and see if there is time for Dr. Harper and Chancellor 
White.
    Ms. Pierce. Yes. We are really committed to making sure 
that students continue to have access to those basic services, 
and so funding to help us meet those needs is critical. 
Students need transportation. They need child care. They need 
access to affordable healthcare. They need access to mental 
health counseling. They need access to collegiate recovery 
programs. They need access to peer mentoring and tutoring, and 
they need access to their learning communities.
    For some of our students, the act of coming on campus and 
being on campus is what inspires them to persevere. Being 
disconnected from the campus is very difficult for them. 
Everyone doesn't have a quiet, stable environment in which to 
learn at home, so we need to be able to maintain access on 
campus for specialty labs, computer labs, specialty software, 
career and technical programs where students have to perform 
skills that must be done on campus [inaudible].
    Ms. Bonamici. My time has expired--is expired, but I will 
ask that Dr. Harper and Chancellor White on the record to 
respond to that question.
    Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici.
    And I believe, Mr. Smucker, can I just ask you, as far as 
you know, is there anybody on the line that--I looked through 
here. I don't see anybody waiting.
    Mr. Smucker. I think you are correct, Madam Chair. I think 
we are through all the Republicans.
    Voice. Ms. Adams?
    Chairwoman Davis. Okay. I will get to Ms. Adams, 
absolutely. I just wanted to double-check in with Mr. Smucker. 
Okay. Great. Dr. Adams is next, followed by Mr. Norcross, if he 
is available and in the room.
    But Ms.--or Dr. Adams, you have 5 minutes.
    Ms. Adams. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to the ranking 
member as well. Thank you for convening the hearing today. And 
to the witnesses, thank you for your extraordinary testimony.
    Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal 
Colleges and Universities, minority-serving institutions, and 
community colleges are primarily public institutions that serve 
many of our country's low-income students and students of 
color. However, these institutions are chronically underfunded. 
They have fewer resources to support their students.
    So, Dr. Harper, how will State budgets cut 
disproportionately impact HBCUs, TCUs, MSIs, and community 
colleges and their ability to operate effectively and continue 
to serve their students?
    Mr. Harper. As a proud graduate of Albany State University, 
a public historically Black university, I especially appreciate 
this question. State budget cuts will affect those institutions 
in the ways the State appropriations have affected them. They 
have been inequitable for far too long. And therefore, you 
know, when there are cuts, those cuts are going to have, you 
know, an exceptionally deep impact on those chronically 
underfunded institutions.
    I really appreciated Chancellor White's earlier response to 
the question where he named the price of what it costs to be a 
student at the California State University. You know, so many 
HBCUs, Tribal colleges, and community colleges effectively 
educate students of color with far too few resources. It is 
quite remarkable, as a matter of fact, how they make so much 
out of so little. Just imagine if we were able to finance them 
appropriately. They could, in fact, together, they could help 
us close racial equity gaps across all industries if only we 
would invest in them equitably.
    Ms. Adams. Absolutely. Well, certainly, thank you for your 
question [sic]. I am a proud two-time graduate of North 
Carolina A&T State University, the largest public HBCU in the 
country right now, and I am a 40-year retired professor from 
Bennett College in Greensboro, which is a private school. But I 
have been reading that some of our Nation's HBCUs could face 
enrollment drops of up to 20 percent in the fall due to the 
nature of this pandemic and the impact that it is going to have 
on low-income students.
    So, Dr. Harper, schools like HBCUs are heavily tuition-
driven. These schools rely heavily on tuition for revenue. How 
should Congress support them at this time? And how do we 
prevent what we saw during the 2008 recession where many of our 
schools, in particular HBCUs, faced enrollment drops and, 
therefore, fiscal calamity down the road? So is there a way to 
change that tuition-based model, in your opinion?
    Mr. Harper. Sure. I think that Federal investments that are 
specifically earmarked for bolstering enrollments at HBCUs will 
be incredibly helpful. Just 6 months ago, I concluded a project 
that was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 
which I was looking at HBCU enrollments. The good news is that 
enrollments actually have not declined over time; they have 
flatlined. I think with some specific Federal funding, that 
those institutions could, in fact, invest in the very expensive 
technologies that my university and others like it use to 
recruit students and to yield students, but, you know, those 
institutions don't have the money.
    When you have to make a choice between repairing a sidewalk 
to assure that students are safe or investing in technologies 
that are going to allow you to, you know, really bolster your 
enrollments and attract more students, most presidents are left 
with[inaudible] with the choice of having to repair the 
sidewalk.
    Ms. Adams. Okay. Well, thank you for your question [sic]. I 
really want to get some input from the other panelists in terms 
of the importance of the meticulous Department of Education 
oversight over how CARES Act funds were disbursed and used by 
institutions. And you may have to send me this in writing, but 
I think we have got like one more minute. So, Dr. White or Dr. 
Pierce, if you could respond.
    Mr. White. Yeah. You know, we believe in inclusive 
excellence for all of our students, whether they have 
documentation or not, whether they are international students, 
whether they are from Florida or from California. So we 
supplemented the CARES Act with our own money, you know, to 
make anybody who had a COVID-19-induced added expense was able 
to be supported. But it seemed incomprehensible to me that the 
Department of Education would exclude those students because 
they are part of a fabric of public higher education, bringing 
perspectives from around the world and around the country to 
all of us.
    Ms. Adams. Okay. Well, I am out of time. Thanks to all. 
Thanks to all of our panelists for your responses and for your 
participation today.
    I yield back, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Adams.
    And I want to go back now to Mr. Norcross. Is Mr. Norcross 
available? And then Mr. Castro.
    Mr. Castro, you have 5 minutes. Mr. Castro from Texas.
    Mr. Castro. Yeah. Thank you, Chairwoman. And thank you to 
the panelists for your testimony today.
    I had a few questions about what you believe the long-term 
impacts of COVID-19 will be on higher education, and let me 
preface my question with this. When the pandemic broke, I had 
conversations with both superintendents in my district, K-12 
institutions, and also leaders of the higher education 
institutions, our 2-year colleges, community colleges, and our 
4-year universities, and they all expressed some similar 
experiences and some different ones but, for example, many of 
the 4-year universities said that they were seeing students 
drop off of plans to enroll in their institutions in favor of 
community colleges simply because of fear that they wouldn't be 
able to afford to go to those 4-year institutions any longer. 
You know, we have seen that the pandemic, especially in certain 
States like mine in Texas, has stretched on longer and longer.
    And given that in higher education there is often this 
inverse relationship between cost and completion, in other 
words, the places that are cheapest to go to often have the 
lowest completion rates, what is the long-term impact of COVID-
19 on where students go to college, their ability to complete, 
and also the support that our colleges and universities are 
able to offer for them? And I open that up to any of the 
panelists.
    Mr. Pulsipher. Thank you, Congressman, for that question. I 
will just go ahead and offer perspective on it. There is little 
doubt that individuals and their families are consumers of 
higher education and what we offer. When you have something 
like a pandemic create real disruption in the value proposition 
that was previously contemplated, that is going to change how 
the consumers of education think about it.
    And so simply being the father of two children who are 
currently in a traditional model of higher education as well as 
a graduate of it, but also being the leader of an online 
competency-based education, I think the dynamic is such that if 
many of the, you know, really beneficial emerging adult 
experiences, social aspects, student engagement, if those 
things are not part of the value proposition because of 
longstanding or long-tenured effects of something like a 
pandemic, then the return on investment for the costs asked to 
be paid is going to be a challenge, such that many individuals 
I do think will start focusing more specifically on how can I 
still acquire the learning and credentials I need to advance 
towards the opportunities I require, and what is the more 
affordable ROI I could get for that if many of the values that 
I previously had available to me are not available.
    The other thing I do anticipate is that you will see an 
emerging number of, you know, employers and alternative 
pathways that will start emerging as you also consider the 40-
plus million adults and 10 million workers that are going to be 
displaced because of either technology pandemic that need to be 
reskilled and upskilled, and a 4-year degree pathway is not 
going to be fast enough. And so you will see emerging 
credentials and alternative pathways serving not just the 
first-time, full-time student but the working learners and 
adults who need to find pathways to their next job.
    Mr. Castro. Thank you. I don't know if any of the other 
panelists have--
    Ms. Pierce. If I may, Congressman. I will be very quick and 
say that exactly what you have described is exactly the mission 
of community and technical colleges meeting the needs of 
students as they emerge. We will anticipate over time you will 
see an increase in enrollment in community colleges as people 
come back to seek short-term credentials, long-term 
credentials, transfer programs, as well as opportunities to 
fill up and transfer into different areas of growth. Community 
and technical colleges are affordable, they are a value 
proposition, and they offer excellent opportunities to retool 
our economy.
    Mr. Castro. Thank you.
    Mr. White. Congressman Castro, one thing that [inaudible] 
conversation for a different day, but I think this learning 
deficit that is appearing in our K-12 system where the 
interruptions and disruptions are happening in public schools 
and in private schools that will lead to a disproportionate 
across the spectrum of race and ethnicity and income level, 
that those students, when they do finally get to a community 
college or a 4-year university or an online college, will have 
a different set of preparation. And there will be some learning 
deficits there that the colleges and the universities are going 
to have to deal with. We may not be causing the problem, but it 
is going to be ours to resolve at the end. That is going to 
fundamentally change, I think, the relationship of public 
higher education in particular in the years and decades ahead.
    Mr. Castro. Thank you. I appreciate it.
    And I yield back, Chairwoman.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
    And I believe that we have come to the end of members who 
are ready for questions. I am going to just check our grid 
again to be sure.
    Anybody that we didn't see? Okay.
    Then I wanted to just remind my colleagues that pursuant to 
committee practice, materials for submission for the hearing 
record must be submitted to the Committee Clerk within 14 days 
following the last day of the hearing, so that would be by the 
close of business on July 21 of 2020. The materials submitted 
must address the subject matter of the hearing, and only a 
member of the subcommittee or an invited witness may submit 
materials for inclusion in the hearing record. Documents are 
limited to 50 pages each. Documents longer than 50 pages will 
be incorporated into the record by an internet link that you 
must provide to the Committee Clerk within the required 
timeframe, but please recognize that years from now, that link 
may no longer work.
    Pursuant to House Resolution 965 and the accompanying 
regulations, items for the record should be submitted 
electronically by emailing submissions to 
[email protected]. Member offices are 
encouraged to submit materials to the inbox before the hearing 
or during the hearing at the time the member makes the request. 
The record will remain open for 14 days per committee practice 
for additional submissions after the hearing. And, without 
objection, I would like to enter those following reports into 
the record.
    I want to thank our witnesses certainly for their 
participation today. It has been outstanding, and we know that 
there are many more questions out there. We are all anxious and 
worried, quite honestly, about what is going to happen, and so 
we know how important it is that the your remarks have been 
today. Members of the subcommittee may have some additional 
questions for you, and we ask the witnesses to please respond 
to those questions in writing, and that hearing record will be 
open for 14 days in order to receive those responses.
    I want to remind my colleagues that pursuant to committee 
practice, witness questions for the hearing record must be 
submitted to the Majority Committee Staff or Committee Clerk 
within 7 days, and the questions submitted must address the 
subject matter of the hearing.
    I now want to recognize the distinguished Ranking Member 
for his closing statement, Mr. Smucker. Thank you for being 
with us today, and we would welcome your comments.
    Mr. Smucker. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
    I agree this was a great discussion. I appreciate you 
scheduling this hearing. I want to thank the witnesses as well 
for all of your testimonies, for your insight, your 
perspectives, and for the great work that each of you are doing 
in your institutions.
    We have heard from all of you about the challenges that 
schools have faced in the spring as the coronavirus forced 
institutions to quickly shift to virtual learning environments. 
We also learned that there will be further obstacles that 
schools have to grapple with in the fall.
    The pandemic accelerated the underlying trends that are 
shaping postsecondary education. Increasingly, students are 
demanding a better return on investment. They are demanding on-
demand education and the ability to fluidly transition between 
the classroom and the workforce. Simple fact is that the 
pandemic exposed what members on our side have been asking for 
some time, that Congress must really pass real HEA, or higher 
ed authorization reform. We need to get beyond just doubling 
down on the failing status quo which, unfortunately, is what 
the HEROES Act does. And Congress instead should come together 
in a bipartisan manner to pass--we did come together, I should 
say, in a bipartisan manner to pass the CARES Act. We provided 
billions of dollars in relief to institutions and to students 
that have been impacted by the coronavirus. And, unfortunately, 
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are insisting on 
spending billions more in taxpayer money without first 
understanding the full effect and impact of the CARES Act.
    As Congress discusses additional relief, we should broaden 
the conversation beyond simply just more money for the sector. 
We should be judging our success by how well we enhance 
opportunities for students to seek education and to improve 
their station in life.
    Over several decades, the Federal Government has played an 
increasingly larger role in our higher education system and 
with some pretty dismal results. Just over half our Nation's 
college students are graduating within 6 years, and those who 
do graduate are finding themselves woefully unprepared for the 
workforce. So Congress must work together in a bipartisan 
manner to pass legislation that encourages universities to 
innovate and adapt and meet the needs of today's students.
    Our focus should be on reopening responsibly. We cannot 
lose sight of doing what is best for students. Congress can 
help all students, regardless of their background, succeed by 
encouraging proven methods of learning such as competency-based 
education, including workforce participation in the college 
classroom, and allowing for innovative and stackable 
credentials. The time for substantive HEA reform is now.
    Again, I want to thank the witnesses for your testimonies 
today. I look forward to working with my colleagues to reform 
the HEA in the best interests of the students, institutions, 
and taxpayers.
    Madam Chairwoman, thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Davis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Smucker.
    I now recognize myself for the purpose of making a closing 
statement.
    And I certainly want to thank, once again, our expert 
witnesses for joining the subcommittee's first virtual hearing 
and for your compelling testimony today. Our discussion 
certainly offered an important reminder that Congress still has 
much work to do from providing institutions with additional 
relief to protecting vulnerable students from fraud and 
ensuring that all students can access and complete a college 
degree.
    You know, I think if--we would love to have had students in 
the room as well to share for us how devastating for a number 
of students this has been to try and make some adjustments, to 
anticipate, and to even inquire and ask themselves and their 
families, is it good to try and continue with my higher 
education at this time? What should I do? For freshmen who are 
just entering, for those who have been--maybe they had a year 
of school behind them, and now, they are really troubled about 
what the next step is. And I am sure that you all could have 
offered some advice about that, but our role here is to try and 
understand what can we do? What can the Congress do? What 
should we be doing? And so again, we have a lot of work to do 
in that regard.
    We are well aware that there are a number of alternative 
pathways. In fact, the Committee on Higher Ed has been working 
hard on workforce investment, looking at how we scale up 
apprenticeships more. How do we help young people who maybe are 
looking for alternatives to be able to access those, and 
especially at a time like this when things are so uncertain? 
But at the same time, we have to be sure that those 
institutions and those programs are highly accountable, not 
just to the people that they serve, of course, but also to the 
taxpayers. And so that is a keen interest of ours, and we are 
working very hard on that.
    We also know that there are a lot of reasons why young 
people are not able to profit from their education as well as 
they should. And I think as we look at how we can reimagine, 
how we can think differently about higher education, that we 
need to be certain that we understand what are those reasons 
for them not being able to achieve in the way they wanted in 
the past, and how do we work or how do we adjust our higher 
education system to respond to that and, again, look at our 
workforce investments.
    So again, I thank you very much for being here, and we know 
that we must advance the HEROES Act. I think a little 
differently than my colleague, Mr. Smucker. I think that we 
need to have that support there in order to do what needs to be 
done to create this reimagining within our communities. If we 
don't have that, then those students who benefit from that 
support, that mentoring, all that we have been able to do in 
the past, will not have that in school, and they will probably 
leave the system and maybe never return, even though they have 
the great potential to be able to have made those contributions 
as individuals in the future. We can't let that happen. So we 
ought to be certain that we are thinking ahead about the 
support that is needed.
    And there is no question that COVID has impacted the 
ability of each and every school to prepare their students and 
to be able to deliver in the way that they need to deliver. So 
I hope that we can come together on behalf of the HEROES Act 
and overcome this pandemic and excel into the future.
    Thank you again. We really benefited from your expertise 
today.
    And with that, if there is no further business, without 
objection, the subcommittee stands adjourned. Thank you all.
    
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    [Whereupon, at 2:53 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

                                 [all]